Dessa
Feminine
Odessa is named after a city that was somewhere else. Catherine the Great's court believed a Greek colony called Odessos had stood on the site in 1795; it had not, being some distance away in what is now Bulgaria. The city is named after a scholarly mistake.
How old is the name Dessa?
Dessa was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Dessa alive today was born around 1958, making them about 67 years old. About 1,100 people named Dessa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Dessa most popular?
Dessa peaked in 1880, reaching #492 nationally. Today it ranks #6838, 6,346 places below that high. See the whole 1880 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Odessos to Dessa
The story of Dessa
Odessa was founded by Catherine II on the site of an Ottoman fortress, and its Greek name was chosen in the fashion of the period, when the Russian court was giving classical names to its new Black Sea cities: Kherson, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Odessa. The identification of the site with the ancient Odessos was mistaken; the real Odessos is Varna. The city's name reached American use through nineteenth-century immigration and through the town of Odessa, Texas. Dessa is its clip, formed by cutting the front off, and its best year in American records is 1880, at the very beginning of registration.
Meaningscholars disagree
Not established
Dessa is most likely a clip of Odessa, the Ukrainian city, which was named in 1795 after a supposed ancient Greek settlement on the site. Other routes make it a clip of Modesta, from Latin modestus, moderate, or of Theodosia. None can be assigned, and the Greek name Odessos, from which the city took its name, has no recovered meaning of its own.
How the name formed
- Odessos
- Odessa
- Dessa
Related forms: Odesa · Odessa · Desa
Pronouncing Dessa
DESS-uh
Two syllables with the stress on the first. Odessa is three, oh-DESS-uh, with the weight in the middle; cutting the front moves the stress forward.
Nicknames for Dessa
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 193223 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #492reached in 1880
- Change vs 2022
- +45.5%16 in 2025, from 11
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Dessa in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Odesa in Ukrainian — related form
- Odessa in English — related form
- Desa in Serbian — related form
Dessas among us
people named Dessa are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 100,454 born in 2025 was named Dessa
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Dessa sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Dessa beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Dessa in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Five letters, two syllables, and no spelling difficulty.
- A real and famous city available behind it.
- Genuinely rare while being entirely easy to say.
- Odessa is far better known and will be assumed.
- The name is a fragment of a longer one rather than a word of its own.
- It reads as a nineteenth-century American name, because that is its period.
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Dessa
Feminine · #6838 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Dessas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,100 people named Dessa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Dessa in 2025?
- Dessa ranks #6838 among US girl names in 2025, with 16 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Dessa?
- About 1 in every 100,454 US girls born in 2025 was named Dessa — 16 in all.
- Will my child share the name Dessa with classmates?
- Dessa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Dessa
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Malana#6838 · Jeannie#6838 · Maxie#6838 · Nicol#6838 · Chaney#6838 · Keana#6838 · Concetta#6838 · Pheobe#6838
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Dessa? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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