Marissa

Where Marissa comes from

The dictionaries list Marissa as a given name — a female given name from Spanish, a contraction of Maria Lisa or Maria Luisa, though sometimes regarded as a re-interpretation of the name Melissa as a homophone in another European language — but don't trace where it came from. The record below is what the SSA data shows.

  • Spanish
  • 3 syllables
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1936
    First appearance
    #4,181 among girls, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1994
    Peak, #53
    6,246 babies named Marissa — more than any year before or since.
  3. 2007
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #132.
In the dictionary
  • A female given name from Spanish, a contraction of Maria Lisa or Maria Luisa, though sometimes regarded as a re-interpretation of the name Melissa as a homophone in another European language.
Namesakes

No widely known Marissa turns up in the encyclopedias yet — the name is still all theirs to make famous.

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.