Lorissa
Feminine
Change one vowel and Larissa stops looking Greek and starts looking Latin. The o pulls the name towards Laura and the laurel, which it has nothing to do with; the original is a city in the plain of Thessaly, and its meaning was already lost before anyone wrote it down.
How old is the name Lorissa?
Lorissa first appears in US birth records in 1965 — 60 years ago. The typical Lorissa alive today was born around 1991, making them about 34 years old. About 1,200 people named Lorissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Lorissa most popular?
Lorissa peaked in 1970, reaching #2160 nationally. See the whole 1970 chart.
Where it comes from
From Larissa to Lorissa
The story of Lorissa
Larissa is the capital of Thessaly and one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in Europe, sitting in the flattest and most fertile part of Greece, which made it wealthy and made it a target. It gave the Greek world horses and a long series of aristocratic families, and it is where Hippocrates is said to have died. Much later, when astronomers began naming the small moons of Neptune after figures from the sea myths, one of them was called Larissa; it is about two hundred kilometres across, was seen properly for the first time by a passing spacecraft, and is close enough to the planet that it will eventually be pulled apart. So the name belongs to a plain, a city and a doomed rock, and had no meaning in any of them.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Larissa is a place name from before Greek, one of a set of words in that part of the world that Greek inherited from a language nobody can now read. The usual gloss, citadel, is a guess based on the word turning up as the name of several fortified hills. The o in this spelling suggests a connection to Laura that does not exist, since Laura is Latin and this is not.
How the name formed
- Larissa
- Lorissa
Related forms: Larisa · Larissa · Larissa
Pronouncing Lorissa
luh-RISS-uh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The first vowel is reduced to nothing in ordinary speech, which is exactly why it can be written with an a or an o without any audible difference at all.
Nicknames for Lorissa
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
- 1965
- Most girls named
- 199449 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2160reached in 1970
- Change vs 2018
- 0.0%5 in 2021, from 5
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.
Lorissa in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Larisa in Russian — same name
- Larissa in Greek — transliteration
- Larissa in Italian — same name
Lorissas among us
people named Lorissa are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Lorissa sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The rhythm is easy and the name is never mispronounced once it has been heard.
- Rissa and Lori are two short forms belonging to different decades.
- The name is established in Russian and Greek use, so it is not an American invention.
- Larissa is the standard spelling and this one will be corrected by people trying to help.
- The o suggests a link to Laura and Lauren that is not there.
- There is no meaning available, and the citadel gloss in print is a guess.
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Lorissa
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Lorissas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Lorissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Lorissa in 2025?
- Lorissa is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Lorissa with classmates?
- Lorissa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More L names
The most-given names starting with L, all years combined.
Linda#902 · Lisa#987 · Laura#379 · Lauren#401 · Lillian#57 · Lori#1721 · Louise#514 · Lois#1666
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Lorissa? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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