Pamela (name)

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This article is about the name Pamela. For other uses or acronyms, see Pamela (disambiguation). For the novel, see Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded.
Pamela
Pronunciation/ˈpæmələ/ PAM-ə-lə
GenderFemale
Origin
Word/nameunknown
Region of originEngland, 16th century
Other names
Related namesPam

Pamela is a feminine given name, often abbreviated to Pam.[1] Pamela is also infrequently used as a surname.[2]

History[edit]

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 but it was not in common usage until the 20th century.[2] A rare early bearer of the name, Lady Edward FitzGerald (c. 1773 – 1831), although known by the first name Pamela, was born Stephanie Caroline Anne Syms[contradictory].[5]

The name's popularity may have been hindered by the tendency to pronounce it /pəˈmiːlə/ pə-MEE-lə which was not fully superseded by the now-standard /ˈpæmələ/ PAM-ə-lə until the start of the 20th century when the name finally entered general usage.[6] Pamelia was a commonly used version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.[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, with a reported total of eleven newborn girls in Britain given the name in 2009.[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[edit]

People with the name or its variants include:

Surname[edit]

Fictional characters[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Pam". Behind the Name.
  2. ^ a b c "Pamela – name meaning and origin". Think Baby Names. thinkbabynames.com. Retrieved 2008-03-24.
  3. ^ "Pamela". Behind the Name.
  4. ^ Hanks, Patrick; Hardcastle, Kate; Hodges, Flavia (2006). A Dictionary of First Names. Oxford University Press.
  5. ^ "Pamela Fitzgerald". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[dead link]
  6. ^ Norman, Teresa (2003). A World of Baby Names. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group. p. 141. ISBN 0-399-52894-6.
  7. ^ Lorenz, Brenna (September 1989) [9], "Origins of Original Given Names from the Southern United States", Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 37 (3): 201–230{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  8. ^ "Top 100 Drop Outs: Where are they now?". British Baby Names.
  9. ^ "Beyond the Top 1000 Names". www.ssa.gov. United States Social Security Administration. 7 May 2022. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
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