Karmella
Feminine · “Hebrew "garden”
Karmella can be read as two different sacred words at once, and it is neither. English eyes see karma, Sanskrit for action; the actual source is Carmela, from Hebrew karmel, a garden. The two roots have nothing to do with each other, and the spelling accidentally suggests both.
How old is the name Karmella?
Karmella first appears in US birth records in 1960 — 65 years ago. The typical Karmella is a kid of about 12 — this name's wave is very recent. About 500 people named Karmella are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Karmella most popular?
Karmella peaked in 2012, reaching #4486 nationally. Today it ranks #7491, 3,005 places below that high. See the whole 2012 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From karmel to Karmella
The story of Karmella
False resemblances between sacred vocabularies are common once names are written in a shared alphabet, and they are worth naming as coincidences rather than connections. Karma entered English in the nineteenth century through the study of Indian religion and became an everyday word in the 1960s and 1970s. Carmela is a Catholic name from the Marian devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, established in Italy and Spain for centuries before that. A modern American respelling of the second happens to contain the letters of the first, and nothing follows from it. Karmella appears in American records from the 2000s and peaks in 2012, well after karma had become a common English word.
Meaning
Hebrew "garden, orchard" — from Mount Carmel
From karmel, a planted field or orchard, the name of the mountain ridge in northern Israel, through the Italian and Spanish Carmela. Sanskrit karman, action or deed, is a completely unrelated word from an Indo-European root meaning to do; the resemblance is a coincidence of English spelling. Karmella is a respelling of Carmela with K and a doubled l; neither change affects the sound.
How the name formed
- karmel
- Carmela
- Karmella
Related forms: Carmela · Carmela · כַּרְמֶל
Pronouncing Karmella
kar-MELL-ah
Three syllables, stress on the second. The doubled l changes nothing audible; English does not lengthen consonants. Italian Carmela is kar-MEH-lah with a purer second vowel.
Nicknames for Karmella
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
- 1960
- Most girls named
- 201232 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #4486reached in 2012
- Change vs 2024
- −26.3%14 in 2025, from 19
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.
Karmella in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Carmela in Italian — spelling variant
- Carmela in Spanish — spelling variant
- כַּרְמֶל in Hebrew — related form
Karmellas among us
people named Karmella are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 114,805 born in 2025 was named Karmella
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Karmella
- #7491
- Karmella on the 2025 chart
- #606
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Karmella went to 14 girls in 2025, but Carmela, Carmella and Karmela are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 382, which makes it the 606th most-given girls’ name of the year — 6,885 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 4,208 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 114,805 for Karmella itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Sharmayne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Karmella's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Sharmayne climbed just as high around 1952, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Sharmayne's path sketches the road Karmella is walking now.
Karmella 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
Karmella beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Karmella 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 and reaches back to a named mountain in the Hebrew Bible.
- Carm and Mella are ready short forms.
- It is soft, three syllables and easy to say.
- It is widely misread as containing the word karma.
- Carmela and Carmella are the standard spellings.
- It is easily confused with caramel in speech.
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Karmella
Feminine · #7491 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Karmellas 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 Karmella are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Karmella?
- Karmella is one of 4 recorded spellings. Carmela is the more common one — 186 births in 2025 against 14 for Karmella.
- How popular is the name Karmella in 2025?
- Karmella ranks #7491 among US girl names in 2025, with 14 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Karmella?
- About 1 in every 114,805 US girls born in 2025 was named Karmella — 14 in all.
- Will my child share the name Karmella with classmates?
- Karmella will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Karmella
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Christie#7491 · Carmelita#7491 · Jetta#7491 · Hildegard#7491 · Rickie#7491 · Billy#7491 · Angelyn#7491 · Jewell#7491
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Karmella? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Karmella and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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