Cameron

280,514 people in America carry this name — ranked #189 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it KA mur uhn

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K AE1 M ER0 AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 280,514 2020 Census
  • Rank #189 Common
  • As a surname 52,870 ranked #625 the other way round

What Cameron means and where it comes from

Gaelic in origin, reading literally as “from Cam, crooked, and sron, nose, crooked or hooked-nose”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Cameron has been given

317,202 babies were given this name since 1882. The busiest year was 2000, with 14,357 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00s 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2000s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names that fit Cameron

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Cameron Charles — same opening
  • Cameron Nathan — runs together
  • Cameron Carlos — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Is Cameron a boy's or a girl's name?

90.2% men
27,554 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Same syllables and stress as Cameron

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 68.1%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 16.1%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 6.6%
  • Two or more races — 7.0%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.4%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.7%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The states where Cameron is most common

In New Hampshire the name is given 2.0 times as often as it is across the country.

  • New Hampshire ×2.0
  • North Carolina ×1.7
  • Delaware ×1.5
  • Maine ×1.5
  • South Carolina ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers