Meaning and history
Pamela is a name invented in the late 16th century by the poet Philip Sidney for his romance Arcadia (1593), possibly intended to mean “all sweetness” from Greek πᾶν (pan) “all” and μέλι (meli) “honey.” It was later used by Samuel Richardson for the heroine of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), after which it came into use as a given name, though it did not become popular until the 20th century.
20062006: 568 births, rank #532
2007: 516 births, rank #582
2008: 455 births, rank #671
2009: 331 births, rank #842
2010: 258 births, rank #983
20112011: 266 births, rank #961
2012: 215 births, rank #1,148
2013: 205 births, rank #1,171
2014: 185 births, rank #1,289
2015: 167 births, rank #1,399
20162016: 184 births, rank #1,300
2017: 155 births, rank #1,451
2018: 136 births, rank #1,585
2019: 146 births, rank #1,495
2020: 123 births, rank #1,668
20212021: 112 births, rank #1,801
2022: 95 births, rank #2,034
2023: 102 births, rank #1,934
2024: 88 births, rank #2,150
20252025: 82 births, rank #2,239
Pamela rose from #984 to #962 for girls between 2010 and 2011. Its highest annual birth count came in 1954, with 27,361 births.