Melissa
Feminine · “bee”
Melissa is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 760,128 girls against 2,495 boys since 1880. See Melissa as a boy name
A sixteenth-century Italian epic put this name back into use. Melissa is the good sorceress in Orlando Furioso — the one who unpicks the enchantments and tells people the truth about themselves — and the poem was read across Europe for three hundred years, which is why a Greek common noun became an English name.
How old is the name Melissa?
Melissa was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Melissa alive today was born around 1978, making them about 47 years old. About 722,000 people named Melissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Melissa most popular?
Melissa peaked in 1977, reaching #2 nationally. Today it ranks #419, 417 places below that high. See the whole 1977 chart.
Where it comes from
From melissa to Melissa
The story of Melissa
Very few Greek common nouns became English names. Most of what English took from Greek came through the church or through mythology, arriving as the names of people; a word for an insect is a different kind of borrowing, and it needed a reason. Ariosto supplied one. His Melissa is a benign magician who lives in Merlin's cave, and the poem's enormous popularity carried the name into Italian, French and English use in the sixteenth century. It has been in the record continuously since, and it reached the very top of the American lists four hundred years after the poem was printed.
Meaning
bee
The Greek melissa is the ordinary word for a honeybee, from the word for honey. It is a common noun used as a name, which is rarer than it sounds.
How the name formed
- melissa
- Melissa
Related forms: Melissa · Melisa · Melissa
Pronouncing Melissa
muh-LISS-uh
Three syllables with the weight in the middle. Said essentially the same way in English, Italian and modern Greek.
Nicknames for Melissa
High
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
- 197828,327 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2reached in 1977
- Change vs 2022
- −9.2%747 in 2025, from 823
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.
Melissa in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Melissa in Italian — same name
- Melisa in Spanish — spelling variant
- Melissa in Greek — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Melissas among us
people named Melissa are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 2,152 born in 2025 was named Melissa
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 Barbara test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Melissa's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Barbara climbed just as high around 1937, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Barbara's path sketches the road Melissa is walking now.
Melissa 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
Where Melissa is headed
Melissa should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Melissa beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Melissa in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is spelled and said nearly identically across English, Italian, Spanish and Greek.
- The meaning is concrete, pleasant and among the shortest any name carries.
- It carries four established short forms with quite different characters.
- It has an unbroken run in American records from the first year they were kept.
- It is heavily generation-marked to the nineteen-seventies and eighties.
- Melisa and Mellissa are both in the record and will be written for you.
- The spelling is recorded for a small number of boys, though it reads overwhelmingly as a girl's name.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Melissa to the vote.
Add it to a family vote or a couple’s swipe deck — the other person gets one card, a simple answer and room to say why. No app, no account for them.
Only the people you invite can see your list.
Already decided on Melissa? Hide it among decoys and let them guess.
What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Melissa
Feminine · #419 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Melissas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 722,000 people named Melissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Melissa in 2025?
- Melissa ranks #419 among US girl names in 2025, with 747 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Melissa?
- About 1 in every 2,152 US girls born in 2025 was named Melissa — 747 in all.
- Will my child share the name Melissa with classmates?
- Melissa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Melissa
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Joy#419 · Harley#418 · Charlee#417 · Dorothy#421 · Willa#422 · Holly#416 · Opal#423 · Finley#415
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Melissa? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Melissa and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
Compare side by sideIn a hurry? Just pick a winner — one tap, no sign-up, and you see how everyone else voted.
Or jump into a head-to-head
Weighing a whole shortlist? Add the rest in the builder, or settle it with a bracket.
Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
No advertising trackers and no data sellinghow we handle your dataindependent and founder-run, about Name Battle