Kamea
Feminine · “Hawaiian ka mea”
Kamea is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 1,076 girls against 10 boys since 1880.
Hawaiian has eight consonants and five vowels. That is the smallest sound inventory of any major language, and it means the number of possible short words is genuinely small, so collisions with names invented elsewhere are a matter of arithmetic rather than coincidence. Kamea is Hawaiian and it is also an American coinage, and both are true.
How old is the name Kamea?
Kamea first appears in US birth records in 1982 — 43 years ago. The typical Kamea alive today was born around 2010, making them about 15 years old. About 1,100 people named Kamea are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kamea most popular?
Kamea peaked in 2010, reaching #2670 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 5,692 places below that high. See the whole 2010 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From ka mea to Kamea
Our story of Kamea
Our reading is that Hawaiian's small sound inventory makes this kind of overlap inevitable and worth explaining rather than resolving. The language has p, k, m, n, l, h, w and the glottal stop, five vowels, and no closed syllables, which means every word is a string of consonant-vowel pairs drawn from a very short list. The mathematics are unforgiving: there are only so many two and three syllable words available, and any naming system that produces similar shapes will land on some of them. American coinage produces exactly such shapes, since it also favors open syllables and simple consonants. So a name like Kamea, Kalani or Malia can be genuinely Hawaiian, genuinely American, or both in different families, and the spelling cannot tell you which. What can tell you is the company the name keeps in the data, and here it keeps American company.
Meaningscholars disagree
Hawaiian ka mea, the one or the thing
In Hawaiian ka is the definite article and mea is a thing, a person or a matter, so ka mea is the one or the thing. It is used in names and in ordinary speech. In American records Kamea is at least as likely to be a coinage on the Ka- prefix, alongside Kamiya, Kamari and Kamaya, and the 2010 peak sits with that family. Both readings are current.
How the name formed
- ka mea
- Kamea
Related forms: Kamea
Pronouncing Kamea
kah-MEH-ah
Three syllables in Hawaiian, stress on the second, every vowel fully pronounced. Americans usually say kah-MAY-ah, giving the e the English long value, which Hawaiian does not have.
Nicknames for Kamea
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
- 1982
- Most girls named
- 201067 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2670reached in 2010
- Change vs 2024
- −50.0%12 in 2025, from 24
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.
Kamea in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kamea in Hawaiian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York.
Kameas among us
people named Kamea are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Kamea
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 Sakina test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kamea's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Sakina climbed just as high around 1979, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Sakina's path sketches the road Kamea is walking now.
Kamea 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
Kamea beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kamea in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The Hawaiian reading is a genuine and pleasant one.
- Kam works as a short form in English.
- The sound is smooth and easy to say.
- The American and Hawaiian pronunciations differ in the middle vowel.
- Whether it is a Hawaiian word or a coinage depends on the family.
- Kamea, Kameah and Kamia all circulate.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Kamea
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kameas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,100 people named Kamea are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kamea in 2025?
- Kamea ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kamea?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Kamea — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kamea with classmates?
- Kamea will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kamea
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Margarette#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kamea? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kamea and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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