Kamelia
It comes from the camellia flower, and the flower carries a real surname: Linnaeus named the genus after Georg Joseph Kamel, a Jesuit botanist. In Poland the name stays rare, so most people go a lifetime without meeting a Kamelia.
Kamelia Pronunciation
Kamelia is pronounced kah-MEL-yah (/kaˈmɛlja/).
What Kamelia means
Where Kamelia comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Kamelia comes to us through Latin, from the flower called camellia. Carl Linnaeus named the genus Camellia after Georg Joseph Kamel, a Jesuit brother and botanist who documented the plants of the Philippines in the late seventeenth century. So a girl called Kamelia carries a botanist's surname turned into a Latin plant name turned into a first name.
In Polish the name gathers two senses, doskonałość and pełnia, perfection and fullness. Those readings came later, drawn from the flower's dense, even petals rather than from any root in Latin grammar. The camellia opens in a tight spiral. People saw completeness in it.
On a school register, Kamelia sits among the more common names. It stands out a little. Whoever bears it holds a Latin word for a flower named after a real man, and the Polish sense of fullness, pełnia, that grew around it.
When Kamelia celebrates name day
Kamelia appears 2 times in the Polish name day calendar, 1 of them as a main name, the first on 3 August.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Kamelia
1 in 95122 women in Poland is named Kamelia. 237 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2017 among female names.
Kamelia's popularity over time
7 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #809 among newborns. It is making a comeback after a low in 2007.
Where Kamelia is most popular
Kamelia is most popular in Łódź, 309% above the national average (6 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Opole (+275%) and Podlaskie (+163%). It is least common in Silesian, 24% below average.
-
Łódź6 girls born+309%
-
Opole2 girls born+275%
-
Podlaskie2 girls born+163%
-
Pomeranian3 girls born+76%
-
Kuyavian-Pomeranian2 girls born+58%
-
Masovian5 girls born+22%
-
Greater Poland3 girls born+20%
-
Silesian2 girls born−24%
Kamelia as a middle name
Kamelia is a first name for 237 women in Poland and a middle name for another 65, a 78/22 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 842nd, between Bernardetta (65) and Karla (65).
-
#840 Andżela65
-
#841 Bernardetta65
-
#842 Kamelia65
-
#843 Karla65
-
#844 Kathryn65