Sir Philip Sidney invented the name Pamela for a pivotal character in his epic prose work, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, written in the late 16th century and published posthumously. The name is widely taken to mean "all sweetness", formed on the Greek words πᾶν pan ("all") and μέλι meli ("honey"),[2][3] but there is no evidence regarding what meaning, if any, Sidney intended for it.[4]
The Samuel Richardson novel Pamela in 1740 or 1741 inaugurated the use of Pamela as a given name, though it remained a rare name. The name's popularity may have been hindered by the tendency to pronounce it /pəˈmiːlə/pə-MEE-lə which was not fully superseded by the now-standard /ˈpæmələ/PAM-ə-lə until the start of the 20th century when the name finally entered general usage.[5]
Pamelia was a commonly used version of the name in use in the Southern United States. This evolved into Permelia, a variant of the name in use since the 1700s.[6] Other derivations and spelling variants in use in the 18th and 19th centuries included Palmelia, Pamala, Pamelea, Pamella, Pamelie, Pamena, Pamida, Pamina, Pamla, Pammala, Parmela, Parmelia, Parmilla, and Permilia. [7]
Pamela was very popular in Great Britain from the 1930s through the 1950s with the tallies of the most popular names for British newborn girls for the respective years 1934, 1944 and 1954 ranking Pamela at respectively #20, #17 and #24. Evidently less popular from the 1960s—being ranked on the respective 1964 tally at #67—the name Pamela has grown increasingly unfashionable in recent years.[8] The name was similarly most used throughout the Anglosphere from the 1940s through the mid-1970s. For instance, it was among the one hundred most used names for girls in the United States between 1943 and 1976 and remained among the one thousand most used names for American girls until 2011. It has since declined in use.[9]
Given name
People with the name or its variants include:
Pamela Adlon, (née Segall), American actress, writer and director
Pamela Anderson, Canadian-American actress, model and media personality
^"Beyond the Top 1000 Names". www.ssa.gov. United States Social Security Administration. 7 May 2022. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
Name list
This page or section lists people that share the same given name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article.
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