Pamela (name) explained

Pamela
Gender:Female
Region:England, 16th century
Origin:unknown
Related Names:Pam

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

History

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. 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.[5]

The name's popularity may have been hindered by the tendency to pronounce it which was not fully superseded by the now-standard until the start of the 20th century when the name finally entered general usage.[6] Pamelia was a commonly used version of the name in use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.

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.[7] 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.[8]

Given name

People with the name or its variants include:

Surname

Fictional characters

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Pam . Behind the Name.
  2. Web site: Pamela – name meaning and origin. Think Baby Names . thinkbabynames.com . 2008-03-24.
  3. Web site: Pamela . Behind the Name.
  4. Book: Hanks . Patrick . Hardcastle . Kate . Hodges . Flavia . 2006 . A Dictionary of First Names . Oxford University Press.
  5. Encyclopedia: Pamela Fitzgerald . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  6. Book: Norman , Teresa . 2003. A World of Baby Names. The Berkley Publishing Group. New York. 141. 0-399-52894-6. registration.
  7. Web site: Top 100 Drop Outs: Where are they now?. British Baby Names.
  8. Web site: Beyond the Top 1000 Names . 7 May 2022 . www.ssa.gov . United States Social Security Administration . 7 July 2022 .

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