Is Camden in the Bible?

No one named Camden appears in the Bible. Camden is an English surname taken from a place-name, usually traced to Campden in Gloucestershire, whose Old English name meant “valley with enclosures.” It became popular as a boys’ name in the United States from the 1990s.

What does Camden mean in the Bible?

Camden has no meaning in the Bible, because the Bible never uses it. It is not a Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek word, and it has no counterpart among the names in the Bible. Its meaning comes from Old English.

The place behind the surname was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Campedene. That name joins two Old English words: camp, “enclosure,” borrowed from the Latin campus, “plain,” and denu, “valley.” The Internet Surname Database gives the meaning as “valley with camps or enclosures,” and Behind the Name, more cautiously, as “perhaps ‘enclosed valley.’” By the fourteenth century the settlement had divided into two villages, Chipping Campden, from an Old English word for a market, and Broad Campden. The meaning “winding valley,” which also circulates online, is not supported by the name references.

How Camden became a first name

A famous bearer of the surname was William Camden (1551–1623), the English historian and headmaster of Westminster School. His Britannia was the first survey of Great Britain and Ireland to describe each county’s landscape, antiquities and history together. His Remains Concerning Britain (1605) includes a chapter on Christian names, with an alphabetical list of what each one means.

After William Camden’s death, his house at Chislehurst, in Kent, became known as Camden Place. In the eighteenth century it was bought by the lawyer Charles Pratt, later Lord Chancellor, who took the title Baron Camden, of Camden Place, when he was made a peer in 1765, and was later created Earl Camden. Camden Town in London is named after him, and so is the city of Camden, New Jersey.

As a first name Camden is recent. It first appeared among the 1,000 most common names for American boys in 1990, reached 99th place in 2013 and ranked 205th in 2025. It has not appeared in the top 1,000 for girls. Kamden is a variant spelling.

Is Camden a Christian name?

Camden has no religious origin, and Christians are free to use it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its section on the Christian name, says: “God calls each one by name. Everyone’s name is sacred. The name is the icon of the person” (2158). For this it points to two passages of Scripture: Isaiah 43:1, where the Lord tells Israel, “I have called you by name, you are mine,” and John 10:3, where the shepherd “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

Related reading

• Is Glenn in the Bible? A Scottish name meaning “valley”
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names