Pamela is a feminine given name, often abbreviated to Pam. Pamela is also infrequently used as a surname.
Contents
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"), but there is no evidence regarding what meaning, if any, Sidney intended for it.
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 The name's popularity may have been hindered by the tendency to pronounce it pə-MEE-lə which was not fully superseded by the now-standard PAM-ə-lə until the start of the 20th century when the name finally entered general usage.
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. 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.
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 No. 20, No. 17 and No. 24. Evidently less popular from the 1960s—being ranked on the respective 1964 tally at No. 67—the name Pamela has grown increasingly unfashionable in recent years. 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.
Given name
People with the name or its variants include:
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, one of the main characters of the 1987 Mexican sitcom television series ¡Ah qué Kiko!
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.