Camilla carries 29,420 cumulative American girls on SSA record and currently sits at rank 324, with a 2019 peak. The chart traces a slow, multi-decade climb: thin presence through the late 20th century, gradual growth across the 2000s, accelerating climb through the 2010s as the broader Italian-cluster revival lifted her, and a recent gentle plateau. Camilla is the older, more European-feeling sibling of the dominant American spelling Camila.
The Latin and Roman source
Camilla derives from the Latin Camilla, the feminine of Camillus, traditionally read as "attendant at a religious ceremony" or "young attendant." Camillus was a Roman cognomen carried by the famous general Marcus Furius Camillus, but the female Camilla owes her cultural footprint to a different source entirely: Virgil's Aeneid, where Camilla is a warrior virgin queen of the Volsci who fights against Aeneas with extraordinary speed and grace.
The Virgilian Camilla gave the name a strong literary and slightly martial register across European medieval and Renaissance use, and the name appears in Italian, Spanish, French, and German Catholic naming traditions from the medieval period onward. Frances Burney's 1796 novel Camilla and various 19th-century English novels kept the name in literary circulation.
The Camilla versus Camila question
The American naming landscape now splits cleanly between the two spellings. Camila with one L, the dominant Latin-American spelling, ranks far higher in the SSA top 50 and reads as decisively Hispanic on the page. Camilla with two Ls, the older Italian and English spelling, sits in the lower top 350 and reads as more European-classical. Both pronunciations are essentially identical. Browse the broader Italian girl names set.
The counter-reading
Queen Camilla, who became Queen Consort in 2022, gave the British spelling fresh royal weight, but the connection cuts both ways depending on family politics. American parents who follow British royal news may either embrace the connection or specifically avoid it, and the chart since 2019 reflects neither a sharp climb nor a sharp drop, suggesting most American parents weighing Camilla aren't choosing it for that reason.
Sibling pairings work across the Italian-classical cluster: Camilla and Francesca, Camilla and Bianca, Camilla and Aurelia, Camilla and Cordelia. Middle names tend traditional: Camilla Rose, Camilla Jane, Camilla Catherine, Camilla Elizabeth. The Cami, Mila, and Milly nicknames are all available, with Mila reading as decisively contemporary and Milly carrying a more vintage-British register. See similar climbers on the rising names list, or compare with Camila.