Pamela (name)

Look up Pamela in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Pamela is a feminine given name. Pamela is often abbreviated to Pam.^[1] Pamela is 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. It is widely thought that Sidney intended the name to mean "all sweetness" having in mind the Greek words pan ("all") and meli ("honey").^[2][3]

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.^[2]

A rare early bearer of the name is Lady Edward FitzGerald (c.1773-1831) and although she went by the name Pamela her true name was Stephanie Caroline Anne Syms.^[4]

The name's popularity may have been hindered by the tendency to pronounce it /pəˈmiːlə/ pə-MEE-lə which was not fully superseded by the now-standard /ˈpæmələ/ PAM-ə-lə until the start of the 20th century.^[5]

People with the name or its variants include:

Given name

Surname

• Lucia Pamela

Fictional characters

• Pamela Andrews, heroine of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740–41)
• Pamela of the Jungle, a comic-book jungle girl created by Italian author Enrico Teodorani^[6]
• Pam Halpert, a character in The Office
• Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley or Poison Ivy
• Pam, from the film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
• Pamela Voorhees, a character in the Friday the 13th films
• Pamela Barnes Ewing, a character in TV series Dallas
• Pam, a vampire bouncer from The Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse Series by author Charlaine Harris and an American television drama series True Blood.
• Pamela Abbott, one of the Abbot sisters and Doug's love interest (Joaquin Phoenix) in the movie, Inventing the Abbotts
• Pamela "Pam" James, from the TV series Martin
• Pamela Douglas a character from Soap Opera The Bold and the Beautiful

References

See also

• Pam (disambiguation)
• List of Wikipedia articles starting with Pamela
• List of Wikipedia articles starting with Pam

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