PROFILPELAJAR.COM

Pamela
	Mr. B. Finds Pamela Writing, by Joseph Highmore.
Pronunciation	/ˈpæmələ/ PAM-ə-lə
Gender	Female
Origin
Word/name	unknown
Region of origin	England, 16th century
Other names
Related names	Pam

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

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, 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 The name's popularity may have been hindered by the tendency to pronounce it /pəˈmiːlə/ pə-MEE-lə which was not fully superseded by the now-standard /ˈpæmələ/ PAM-ə-lə until the start of the 20th century when the name finally entered general usage.^[5] Pamelia was a commonly used version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
Pamela Barnes (1937-1975), New Zealand artist
Pamela Bellwood, American actress
Pamela J. Bjorkman, American biochemist and molecular biologist
Pamella Bordes, Indian choreographer and model
Pamela Indah Bowie [id], Indonesian actress
Pamela Branch, British crime novelist
Pamela Britton, American actress and singer
Pamela Brown, multiple people
Pamela Brooks, British writer
Pamela Bustin, American field hockey player-coach
Pamela Butchart, Scottish children's author
Pamela Carruthers, British showjumper, and showjumping course designer
Pamela Chopra, Indian playback singer and film producer
Pamela Clabburn, British museum curator and writer
Pamela Copus, American musical artist
Pamela Courson, long-term companion of Jim Morrison
Pamela Kyle Crossley, historian
Pamela Crowe, Manx politician
Pamela Cundell, British actress
Pamela Dean, American fantasy author
Pamela Des Barres (born Pamela Ann Miller), American rock and roll groupie, writer, musician, and actress
Pamela Duncan (novelist), American novelist
Pamela Duncan (actress), American actress
Pamelyn Ferdin (or "Pamela Lynn"), child actress, animal rights activist
Pamela Fitzgerald (disambiguation), multiple people
Pamela Frank, American musician
Pamela Frankau, English novelist
Pamela Franklin, British actress
Pamela Gay, American astronomer
Pamela Geller, American anti-Muslim, far-right political activist, blogger and commentator
Pamela Gemin, American writer and academic
Pamela Gidley, American actress and model
Pamela Gorkin, American mathematician
Pamela Green, English model and actress
Pamela Green (DJ), American hip hop girl group formed in 1985
Pamela Gordon (actress), American actress
Pamela Gordon (politician), Bermudian politician
Pamela Anne Gordon, Canadian model
Pamela Harmsworth, Viscountess Rothermere, British viscountess
Pamela Harriman, American diplomat
Pamela Hayden, American actress
Pamela Healy, American sailor
Pamela Hensley, American actress and author
Lady Pamela Hicks, British aristocrat and relative of the British royal family
Pamela Isaacs, American singer and actress
Pamela Jelimo, Kenyan middle distance runner
Pamela Hansford Johnson, English writer and critic
Pamela Jones, computer law scholar
Pamela Joyner (born 1957/58), American art collector
Pamela S. Karlan, American legal scholar
Pamela Katz, American screenwriter and novelist
Pamela M. Kilmartin, New Zealand astronomer
Pamela Kirkham, 16th Baroness Berners, British parliamentarian
Pamela Klassen, scholar of religion
Pamela Knaack, German actress
Pamela Kunz, American oncologist
Pamela Kurrell, American discus thrower
Pamela Levy, Israeli artist
Pamela London, Guyanese boxer
Pamela Martin (disambiguation), multiple people
Pamela Sue Martin, American actress
Pamela Melroy, American astronaut
Pamela Morris, English publisher and teacher
Pamela Munro, American linguist
Pamela O'Malley, Irish-Spanish bohemian, educationalist and radical
Pamela Pasinetti (born 1993), Thai-Italian model and beauty pageant titleholder
Pamela Payton-Wright, American actress
Pamela Rabe, Canadian actress
Pamela Rai (born 1966), Canadian swimmer
Pamela Rambo, colorist
Pamela Ramljak, Hungarian musical artist
Pamela C. Rasmussen, American ornithologist
Pamela Reed, American actress
Pamela Ribon, American screenwriter, author, blogger and actress
Pamela Rooks, Indian film director and screenwriter
Pamela Salem, British actress
Pamela Samuelson, American lawyer and professor
Pamela Sargent, American feminist, science fiction author, and editor
Pamela Sharples, British politician
Pamela Susan Shoop, American actress and writer
Pamela Silver, American biologist
Pamela Smart, American criminal
Pamela A. Smith (born 1968), U.S. police chief
Pamela Colman Smith, British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist
Pamela Safitri [id], Indonesian actress
Pamela Jayne Soles (born 1950), American actress, commonly known as P. J. Soles
Pamela Spence, Turkish actress and singer
Pamela Springsteen, American actress and photographer
Pamela Stein, American model
Pamela Stephenson, New Zealand-born psychologist, writer, actress and comedian
Pamela Tiffin, American actress and model
Pamela Lyndon "P. L." Travers, Australian-British writer
Pamela Rogers Turner (born 1977), teacher and child rapist
Pamela Vitale, American murderer
Pamela Wallin, Canadian politician
Pamela Willeford, American Ambassador
Pamela Williams, American musician
Pamela Rouse Wright, American philanthropist, clubwoman, businesswoman, and jewelry designer
Pamela Wynne, British writer
Pamela Zoline, American writer and painter

Surname

Lucia Pamela, American musician

Fictional characters

Pamela, one of the Thea Sisters in Thea Stilton
Ursula Pamela Buffay, Phoebe Buffay's twin sister in NBC sitcom Friends
Pamela Andrews, heroine of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740–1741)
Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley or Poison Ivy, character in DC Comics and enemy of Batman
Pamela Voorhees, in the Friday the 13th films
Pamela Barnes Ewing, in TV series Dallas
Pamela Abbott, one of the Abbott sisters in the movie, Inventing the Abbotts
Pamela Douglas, from soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful
Pamela Ibis, a recurring character from the Atelier series of video games.
Pamela Moran, a main character in Army Wives
Pamela Byrnes (later Focker), a main character in the Meet the Parents film trilogy
Pamela Beesly, from the sitcom The Office
Pamela Swynford De Beaufort, from the HBO TV series, True Blood.

References

^ "Pam". Behind the Name.
^ ^a ^b "Pamela – name meaning and origin". Think Baby Names. thinkbabynames.com. Retrieved 2008-03-24.
^ "Pamela". Behind the Name.
^ Hanks, Patrick; Hardcastle, Kate; Hodges, Flavia (2006). A Dictionary of First Names. Oxford University Press.
^ Norman, Teresa (2003). A World of Baby Names. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group. p. 141. ISBN 0-399-52894-6.
^ 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)
^ Charbonneau, Karen (March 17, 2023). American Baby Girl Names: 1587-1920s. Post Falls, Idaho: A Ship's Cat Book. p. 788. ASIN B0BYTTGH3L.
^ "Top 100 Drop Outs: Where are they now?". British Baby Names.
^ "Beyond the Top 1000 Names". www.ssa.gov. United States Social Security Administration. 7 May 2022. Retrieved 7 July 2022.

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.