Temeka
Feminine
Temeka is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 1,414 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Temeka belongs to a family where one ending is fixed and the fronts vary. Half a dozen names in the American record share the same three final letters and differ only in what precedes them, which is a genuinely unusual pattern: most rhyme families vary at both ends, and this one has an ending so stable that the front carries the whole distinction.
How old is the name Temeka?
Temeka first appears in US birth records in 1968 — 57 years ago. The typical Temeka alive today was born around 1979, making them about 46 years old. About 1,400 people named Temeka are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Temeka most popular?
Temeka peaked in 1976, reaching #999 nationally. See the whole 1976 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From An ending detached from earlier names in the family to Temeka
Our story of Temeka
A stable ending is a sign of a healthy piece of machinery. When an ending varies, it means families are still experimenting with it and it has not settled into a shape everybody recognizes; when it stays fixed across a dozen names and two decades, it has become a unit, as reliable as a suffix in a language that has real ones. This one held its form completely. What changed was the front, and the fronts came from the same small stock that supplied every other coinage of the period, which means the family is a grid: a handful of openings crossed with one ending, producing every combination and then a few respellings of each. That grid is the clearest picture anybody has of how American naming actually worked in those years.
Meaningnot established
Not established
No language supplies a source. The ending is a shape that came loose from earlier names in the family and the front is a syllable in wide circulation, and neither carries lexical content. Reference works offering African or Japanese derivations for names of this shape are supplying them, and the several available glosses contradict each other.
How the name formed
- An ending detached from earlier names in the family
- A small stock of fronts in wide circulation
- Every combination produced across two decades
- Temeka among the fronts that were tried
Pronouncing Temeka
tuh-MEE-kuh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle and the first reduced almost to nothing. Every name in this family has the same rhythm, which is what makes them recognizable as a family in speech as well as on paper.
Nicknames for Temeka
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
- 1968
- Most girls named
- 1977130 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #999reached in 1976
- Change vs 1994
- 0.0%5 in 1997, 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.
Temekas among us
people named Temeka 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
Temeka 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 sound is transparent and nobody will need it repeated.
- Meka is a clean short form shared with a coherent family of names.
- It works on the register for either child, which the record confirms.
- Half a dozen names differ from it by one letter and will be confused with it.
- There is no meaning to give, and the glosses offered contradict each other.
- It is firmly of one stretch of American naming.
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Temeka
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Temekas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,400 people named Temeka are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Temeka in 2025?
- Temeka is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Temeka with classmates?
- Temeka will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More T names
The most-given names starting with T, all years combined.
Teresa#908 · Theresa#1548 · Tiffany#878 · Tammy#3645 · Taylor#403 · Tina#2778 · Tracy#2153 · Thelma#4661
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Temeka? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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