Kamara
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from kamara ‘little room’, from Latin camera or camara ‘house’, ‘room’, ‘royal treasury’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 34 countries · latest register: DGE, 2024
/kamaɾa/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated
Kamara is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sierra Leone than in any other country, where it is the 6th most common surname.
- SLSierra Leone≈1 in 53few records(inferred from the name graph)
- SNSenegal≈1 in 750few records
- NONorway1 in 16K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Sierra Leone (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 307 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 53 (inferred from the name graph)
≈120,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Sierra Leone, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from kamara ‘little room’, from Latin camera or camara ‘house’, ‘room’, ‘royal treasury’. The most common Hungarian variant of this surname. Kamaras, is a status name for the treasurer of a court or of the royal household, or alternatively for a chamberlain. Compare German f^MMERER.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kamara counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SL Sierra Leone | #6 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 53 | 326 | Kamara | 34 |
| SN Senegal | #225 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 749 | 4 | Kamara | 21 |
| US United States | — | 6,288 | 1 in 53K | 9K | Kamara | 307 |
| FR France | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 275 | — | 5 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Kamara | 15 |
| NO Norway | — | 332 | 1 in 16K | 332 | — | 23 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Kamara is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from a personal name based on Arabic qamar ‘moon’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Hungarian, chamber (one of the legislative bodies in a government where multiple such bodies exist, or a single such body in comparison to others)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, cabin (a private room on a ship)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, hard crust
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In izh, pork rind
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Moussa Dadis Camarab. 1964GNnot in their usual namePresident of Guinea
- Henri Camarab. 1977SNnot in their usual nameSenegalese and French footballer
- Zoumana Camarab. 1979FRnot in their usual nameFrench football manager (born 1979)
- Diomansy Kamarab. 1980FRSenegalese-French footballer (born 1980)
- Ola Kamarab. 1989NONorwegian footballer
- Aboubakar Kamarab. 1995FRMauritanian and French association football player
- Glen Kamarab. 1995FIFinnish association football player
- Mohamed Ali Camarab. 1997GNnot in their usual nameGuinean footballer
- Boubacar Kamarab. 1999FRFrench footballer (born 1999)
- Aguibou Camarab. 2001GNnot in their usual nameGuinean football player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)62 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 34 countries.
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Kamara?
- In Swahili /kamaɾa/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Kamara have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 125 thousand people named Kamara in Sierra Leone, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kamara.
- Where does the name Kamara come from?
- from kamara ‘little room’, from Latin camera or camara ‘house’, ‘room’, ‘royal treasury’. The most common Hungarian variant of this surname. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Kamara mean?
- Recorded meaning: from kamara ‘little room’, from Latin camera or camara ‘house’, ‘room’, ‘royal treasury’.
- How common is the name Kamara?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,288 people named Kamara in 2010, about 1 in 53 thousand residents.
- How common is Kamara compared with other names?
- In Sierra Leone, Kamara is the 6th most common surname of 628 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kamara?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kamaraThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kamara” — the 6th most common surname in Sierra Leone. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.