Name Awesome

Tamela

Girls' name

Meaning and linguistic origin unconfirmed

Tamela has been given to 7,186 babies in the U.S. since 1947. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1959, with 390 recorded.

Babies named Tamela, 2018

1 in 586,000

Tamela over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010020030040018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Tamela: meaning, origin, and history

Meaning and linguistic origin unconfirmed

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Tamela means

Tamela is a given name.

The naming story behind Tamela

Wikidata records Tamela as a female given name. The entity identifier is Q130319812, and the classification was checked on 2026-10-20. The spelling matches a source label or alias exactly, without removing accents or linking it to a name merely because the letters look similar.

A database classification is different from an etymological explanation, so those questions remain open in the short meaning.

A modern root explanation needs an additional naming or linguistic reference.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 7,186 girls were recorded with the name Tamela between 1947 and 2018. Its highest annual count was 390 in 1959; its best national rank was #493 in 1959.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

How common is Tamela?

Tamela had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2018, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2018
1 in 586,000
6 of 3,516,853 births
Among girls only
1 in 283,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2018
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
406,284 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Tamela sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2018 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 406,284 children born in 2018 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Tamela. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Tamelas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Tamela was born before 1967 — so the typical Tamela is around 58 today.

Median birth year
1967
About 58 years old
Biggest decade
1960s
47.8% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
2.6%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
7,161
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1960s — 47.8% of all recorded uses (3,436).

Is Tamela rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1959 (390)
Years since peak
66
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
27.2% average annual change
Best rank ever
#493
1959

Spellings of Tamela

Tamela is not the most common spelling — Pamela is, with 42.8% against Tamela's 0.52%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Tamela is used

Across 1910–2025, Tamela was most concentrated in West Virginia — about 1 in 8,333 girls, against 1 in 27,343 across all states with data. It was least common in Oregon (1 in —).

012 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1West Virginia1 in 8,333
  2. 2Alabama1 in 11,111
  3. 3Kentucky1 in 12,500
  4. 4Indiana1 in 14,286
  5. 5Ohio1 in 14,286
  6. 6South Carolina1 in 14,286
  7. 7Tennessee1 in 14,286
  8. 8Georgia1 in 16,667

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Tamela has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Tamela around the world

Where Tamela ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • South Australia
    1972–1991
    #669
    in 1991

Popularity data from Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Tamela

People whose public names include Tamela, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Tamela by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#493
1959
Peak year
1959
390 that year
First recorded
1947
Last recorded
2018
All-time count
7,186
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Tamela

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

TameraTamarTamyraTamiaTamiyaEstelaTammieTamyaGiselaTamekaArielaKaelaTamikoTamalaIselaMarcelaTamariTamikaManuelaTamiraTamiyahLeelaTamicaMariela

Names with a curve like Tamela

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Tamela, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

JuliShelliMissyTonjaDanetteDanitaDeannDawnaTresaMachelleLauriTamie

Sibling names for Tamela

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Tamela

Top names of 1959, Tamela's peak yearThe 1950s in fullOther names that peaked in 1959Girls' names starting with T