Janissa
Feminine
Janissa ends in a suffix with a real pedigree. The -issa that finishes Marissa, Carissa, Clarissa and Nerissa comes from Greek, where -issa marked a feminine — the ending behind abbess and behind a whole class of Greek and Latin words. It is one of the few endings in modern American naming that can be traced to a grammar rather than to a fashion.
How old is the name Janissa?
Janissa first appears in US birth records in 1977 — 48 years ago. The typical Janissa alive today was born around 2002, making them about 23 years old. About 500 people named Janissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Janissa most popular?
Janissa peaked in 1994, reaching #3892 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 11,050 places below that high. See the whole 1994 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Janissa
The -issa ending reached English by an unusually literary route. Nerissa appears in The Merchant of Venice and Clarissa in an eighteenth-century novel that was for a time the longest in the language, and both were coinages by their authors on a Latin and Greek model. Marissa followed later, and by the twentieth century the ending was fully available in American naming, attaching to any front syllable that would take it. Janissa belongs to that stage. What separates the family from purely invented endings is that the suffix really did do this job in Greek and Latin, so the names built with it are irregular English but perfectly regular in the older grammar they borrow from.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The ending is meaningful in a grammatical sense rather than a lexical one: -issa marks a feminine, and it does not name anything. The front syllable is the Jan- shared by Jane, Janet and Janice, and whether it is here by descent or by sound cannot be established. So the honest answer is that the name has no settled meaning. Clarissa, by comparison, has one because Clara does; Janissa's front does not carry across in the same way, since Jan- is itself a fragment rather than a word.
Pronouncing Janissa
juh-NISS-uh
juh-NISS-uh, three syllables, stress in the middle, the double s crisp rather than buzzed. The spelling is unambiguous about all of this, which is an advantage the -isa and -yssa versions do not have.
Nicknames for Janissa
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
- 1977
- Most girls named
- 199427 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3892reached in 1994
- Change vs 2023
- −28.6%5 in 2025, from 7
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.
Janissas among us
people named Janissa are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Janissa
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Glennette test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Janissa's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Glennette climbed just as high around 1949, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Glennette's path sketches the road Janissa is walking now.
Janissa 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
Janissa beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Janissa in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The double s fixes the sound of the middle, so the name is said correctly on first reading.
- It rhymes with a whole shelf of established names, which makes it feel familiar without being any of them.
- Nissa works as a short form and sounds nothing like a nickname.
- Janessa is the more common spelling of a very similar sound, and the two will be confused in both directions.
- There is no meaning to hand over, and a family that wants one will be choosing rather than discovering.
- The name reads as a variation on Marissa and Janessa to most people, rather than as a name with its own standing.
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Janissa
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Janissas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Janissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Janissa in 2025?
- Janissa ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Janissa?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Janissa — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Janissa with classmates?
- Janissa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Janissa
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Janissa? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Janissa and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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