Pamela

Pamela is an English name invented by the poet Sir Philip Sidney for a character in his prose romance Arcadia, written in the 1580s. Sidney appears to have coined it from Greek elements meaning all and honey, though the exact reasoning behind his coinage is uncertain. The name gained widespread popularity after Samuel Richardson used it for the virtuous heroine of his 1740 novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, which became one of the most influential works of early English fiction. The short form Pam is a common familiar variant.