Nérissa
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Nérissa is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Coined by Shakespeare for The Merchant of Venice, apparently from Ancient Greek Νηρηΐς (Nērēḯs, “sea-nymph”).
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 2.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 12K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 31K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 318 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈38,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Nerissa in PH Philippines, US United States, AU Australia and 4 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Coined by Shakespeare for The Merchant of Venice, apparently from Ancient Greek Νηρηΐς (Nērēḯs, “sea-nymph”).
Cited for this meaning 3
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Wiktionary
- Nordic Names
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Nérissa counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | #511 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | 24K | Nerissa | 95 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Nerissa | 64 |
| US United States | — | 2,760 | 1 in 121K | 2.8K | Nerissa | 318 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 31K | 4 | Nerissa | 110 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈760 est. | ≈1 in 75K | — | Nerissa | 37 |
| JM Jamaica | #958 | ≈98 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Nerissa | 7 |
| GY Guyana | #705 | 76 | 1 in 9.9K | 76 | Nerissa | 3 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Nérissa mean, and where does it come from?
- Coined by Shakespeare for The Merchant of Venice, apparently from Ancient Greek Νηρηΐς (Nērēḯs, “sea-nymph”). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
- Is Nérissa a male or female name?
- Nérissa is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Nérissa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 38 thousand people named Nérissa in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nerissa.
- How common is the name Nérissa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,760 people named Nérissa in 2020, about 1 in 121 thousand residents.
- How common is Nérissa compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Nérissa is the 511th most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nérissa?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/n%C3%A9rissaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Nérissa” — the 511th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.