Pamala
Feminine · “all sweetness”
Pamela was made up for a book, and we know which book. Philip Sidney invented it for a princess in his Arcadia in the fifteen-eighties, apparently from Greek elements meaning all sweetness, and for a hundred and fifty years it existed only there. Then a second novelist borrowed it and the name escaped into the world.
How old is the name Pamala?
Pamala first appears in US birth records in 1926 — 99 years ago. The typical Pamala alive today was born around 1959, making them about 66 years old. About 6,300 people named Pamala are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Pamala most popular?
Pamala peaked in 1954, reaching #508 nationally. See the whole 1954 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Pamela to Pamala
The story of Pamala
Sidney's Arcadia was widely read but the name stayed inside it. What changed things was Samuel Richardson's Pamela in the seventeen-forties — a novel about a servant resisting her employer, told in letters, enormously popular, endlessly parodied, and often called the first English novel. After it, Pamela was a name people actually used. Sidney had stressed it on the second syllable, and Richardson's readers moved the stress to the first, which is where it has stayed. The a in this spelling records the unstressed middle vowel, which is the same sound whether written a or e.
Meaningscholars disagree
all sweetness
Sidney left no note explaining the name, so the reading is a reconstruction: Greek pan, all, and meli, honey, which would give all-honey or all-sweetness. It fits the elements and it fits the character, and it cannot be proven. What is documented is the invention itself — the name does not appear anywhere before the Arcadia, which makes it one of the small number of English names with a known author and a known decade.
How the name formed
- Pamela
- Pamala
Related forms: Pamela · Pamela
Pronouncing Pamala
PAM-uh-luh
PAM-uh-luh, three syllables, stress at the front, the middle reduced to almost nothing. Sidney's original stressed the second syllable, pa-MEE-la, and a few eighteenth-century readers still did; nobody does now.
Nicknames for Pamala
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
- 1926
- Most girls named
- 1958314 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #508reached in 1954
- Change vs 2000
- +80.0%9 in 2001, 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.
Pamala in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Pamela in Italian — same name
- Pamela in Spanish — same name
Pamalas among us
people named Pamala are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Pamala sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The origin is documented down to the book and the decade, which very few names manage.
- Pam is a complete short form that everyone already knows.
- The spelling matches the unstressed vowel as it is actually said.
- Pamela is the standard spelling and this will be corrected toward it on most documents.
- Because the middle vowel is reduced, the difference cannot be heard and the correction is purely visual.
- The name is very strongly associated with the mid twentieth century and dates a person closely.
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Pamala
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Pamalas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 6,300 people named Pamala are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Pamala in 2025?
- Pamala is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Pamala with classmates?
- Pamala will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More P names
The most-given names starting with P, all years combined.
Patricia#1334 · Pamela#2239 · Phyllis#11932 · Peggy#8362 · Paula#853 · Pauline#2957 · Pearl#776 · Paige#346
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Pamala? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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