Mellissa
Feminine · “bee”
The priestesses of Demeter were called bees. Greek melissa means a bee, and the word was used as a title for the women who served at certain temples — at Eleusis and at Ephesus — apparently for the way they worked and swarmed and produced something sweet. Mellissa doubles a letter that the Greek has only one of.
How old is the name Mellissa?
Mellissa first appears in US birth records in 1926 — 99 years ago. The typical Mellissa alive today was born around 1979, making them about 46 years old. About 5,400 people named Mellissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mellissa most popular?
Mellissa peaked in 1979, reaching #639 nationally. See the whole 1979 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From melissa to Mellissa
The story of Mellissa
Bees mattered in the ancient Mediterranean in a way that is easy to underestimate: honey was the only concentrated sweetener, wax made candles and writing tablets, and the hive was a standard image for an ordered society. Calling temple servants bees was a compliment about industry and order rather than about sweetness. The name reached English through a sixteenth-century Italian epic, where a good enchantress carries it, and became widely used in twentieth-century America. The doubled l belongs to that late American stage entirely.
Meaning
bee
Greek melissa is a bee, built on meli, honey, which is one of the oldest words in the Indo-European family and turns up almost unchanged in half a dozen branches. The priestess use is documented in several places, and a mythological nurse of the infant Zeus is called Melissa in one telling — she fed him on honey. The derivation is not disputed. The second l is an English spelling habit and carries nothing.
How the name formed
- melissa
- Melissa
- Mellissa
Related forms: Μέλισσα · Melissa · Melisa
Pronouncing Mellissa
muh-LISS-uh
muh-LISS-uh, three syllables, stress in the middle. The doubled l is silent work — English doubles a consonant after a short vowel as a convention, and this one is unstressed, so the doubling is decorative rather than functional.
Nicknames for Mellissa
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
- 1926
- Most girls named
- 1979272 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #639reached in 1979
- Change vs 2016
- −37.5%5 in 2018, from 8
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.
Mellissa in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Μέλισσα in Greek — transliteration
- Melissa in Italian — same name
- Melisa in Spanish — same name
Mellissas among us
people named Mellissa 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
Mellissa 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 Greek behind it is concrete, documented and pleasant to explain.
- Missy, Lissa and Mel are three short forms in three different registers.
- The sound is entirely familiar and never causes a stumble.
- Melissa is the standard spelling and this will be corrected toward it on essentially every document.
- The doubled l is inaudible, so it has to be dictated and will still be dropped.
- The name is very strongly associated with one American generation.
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Mellissa
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Mellissas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,400 people named Mellissa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mellissa in 2025?
- Mellissa is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Mellissa with classmates?
- Mellissa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Mary#125 · Margaret#112 · Michelle#465 · Melissa#419 · Maria#87 · Martha#712 · Marie#617 · Mildred#1962
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mellissa? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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