Jamilia
Feminine · “beautiful”
Jamilia is the Arabic Jamila with an extra i, which turns three syllables into four and softens the ending. The word underneath is one of the plainest and best-loved in Arabic naming: jamil means beautiful, and jamila is its feminine. It is an ordinary adjective before it is anyone's name, which is how a great many Arabic names work.
How old is the name Jamilia?
Jamilia first appears in US birth records in 1977 — 48 years ago. The typical Jamilia alive today was born around 1992, making them about 33 years old. About 500 people named Jamilia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jamilia most popular?
Jamilia peaked in 1978, reaching #3009 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 11,933 places below that high. See the whole 1978 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From jamil to Jamilia
The story of Jamilia
Arabic names drawn from ordinary adjectives travel unusually well, because the word is doing the work rather than a story about a person. Jamila spread with Islam across three continents and picked up local spellings in each: Cemile in Turkish, Djamila in French-speaking North Africa, Jamilya in Central Asia. That last version reached a wide readership when the Kyrgyz writer Chinghiz Aitmatov made a young woman named Jamilia the center of a short novel that was translated into dozens of languages. In the United States the name arrived through several communities at once, and the spellings multiplied accordingly — Jamila, Jamilah, Jameelah and Jamilia are all in the record, and all of them are the same word.
Meaning
beautiful
Arabic jamila is the feminine of jamil, beautiful or handsome, from the root j-m-l, which also gives jamal, beauty, and a family of words about grace and good proportion. There is nothing contested here. The name is used across the Arabic-speaking world and far beyond it — Turkey, Iran, the Balkans, Central Asia, West Africa and, for a long time now, the United States — and the sense travels intact everywhere it goes. The added i in this spelling is an English adjustment and carries no meaning.
How the name formed
- jamil
- Jamila
- Jamilia
Related forms: جميلة · Cemile · Djamila · Jamilya · Džemila
Pronouncing Jamilia
ja-MEE-lee-ah
Four syllables with the stress on the second: ja-MEE-lee-ah. The three-syllable Jamila, ja-MEE-lah, is the older and more widely used form, and English speakers meeting this spelling often reduce it back to that. Arabic gives the j the same sound English does.
Nicknames for Jamilia
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1977
- Most girls named
- 197826 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3009reached in 1978
- Change vs 2024
- 0.0%5 in 2025, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Jamilia in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- جميلة in Arabic — transliteration
- Cemile in Turkish — same name
- Djamila in French — transliteration
- Jamilya in Kyrgyz — same name
- Džemila in Bosnian — same name
Jamilias among us
people named Jamilia are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Jamilia
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Faythe test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jamilia's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Faythe climbed just as high around 1919, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Faythe's path sketches the road Jamilia is walking now.
Jamilia sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Jamilia beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jamilia in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled, short and pleasant to explain, which is rarer than it sounds.
- It is a working name across the Arab world, Turkey, the Balkans and Central Asia, so it travels without translation.
- Mila is waiting inside it as a short form that is entirely at home in English.
- Jamila is the standard spelling and the one most people know; this version will be shortened back to it in writing and in speech.
- Four syllables is a long first name in English, and it will get cut down by others before it gets cut down at home.
- The extra i creates a syllable that Arabic does not have, so speakers of the language may read the spelling as an error rather than a variant.
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Jamilia
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jamilias are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Jamilia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Jamilia in 2025?
- Jamilia ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jamilia?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Jamilia — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jamilia with classmates?
- Jamilia will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jamilia
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jamilia? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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