Melissa
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Melissa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 59th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Greek for ‘bee’; a name sometimes found in Ireland.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 330(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 426
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 443
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #129 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 649 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 330 (inferred from the name graph)
675,224 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Greek for ‘bee’; a name sometimes found in Ireland.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Melissa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #59 | 675,224 | 1 in 493 | 675K | Melissa | 649 |
| BR Brazil | #471 | 122,131 | 1 in 1.7K | 122K | Melissa | 195 |
| GB United Kingdom | #116 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 551 | 5 | Melissa | 350 |
| CA Canada | #57 | ≈89,000 est. | ≈1 in 426 | 16 | Melissa | 331 |
| IT Italy | #180 | ≈80,000 est. | ≈1 in 779 | 583 | Melissa | 171 |
| AU Australia | #47 | ≈77,000 est. | ≈1 in 330 | 83 | Melissa | 318 |
| SG Singapore | #45 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 543 | — | Melissa | 145 |
| NZ New Zealand | #74 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 443 | 15 | Melissa | 173 |
675,224 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Melissa is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Greek, ‘bee’. Aname sometimes found in Ireland.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, A plant of the genus Melissa, especially lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), often used medicinally.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, a female given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Melissa
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Melissa är ett grekiskt namn med betydelsen ’bi’. Namnet bärs av en gestalt i Ariostos diktverk Den rasande Roland (1532). Det har varit ett populärt namn de senaste årtion dena. En variant av namnet är Melitta – känt genom melittafiltret för kaffebryggning, namngivet efter den tyska uppfinnaren Melitta Bentz (1873–1950). I den finlands svenska almanackan 5 maj.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Du nom grec de la mélisse, « plante à feuilles d’abeille »; lié symboliquement à l’abeille et rapproché de Déborah.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Melissa Leob. 1960USAmerican actress
- Melissa Sue Andersonb. 1962USactress
- Melissa Gilbertb. 1964USAmerican actress
- Melissa Georgeb. 1976AUAustralian actress
- Melissa Rauchb. 1980USAmerican actress
- Phoenix Marieb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress
- Missy Peregrymb. 1982CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actress
- Melissa Benoistb. 1988USAmerican actress and singer
- Melissa Barrerab. 1990MXMexican actress
- Missy Franklinb. 1995USnot in their usual nameAmerican swimmer, Olympic gold medalist, world champion, world record-holder
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 130 sources across 66 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 675K | #54 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 122K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 121K | #266 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 44K | #859 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 28K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 747 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 693 | #266 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 599 | #54 |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 583 | #66 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 93 | — |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 2000 | 83 | #92 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 16 | #254 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Melissa mean, and where does it come from?
- Greek for ‘bee’; a name sometimes found in Ireland. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Melissa a male or female name?
- Melissa 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 Melissa have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 675 thousand people named Melissa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled melissa.
- How common is the name Melissa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 675,224 people named Melissa in 2020, about 1 in 493 residents.
- How common is Melissa compared with other names?
- In the United States, Melissa is the 59th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Melissa?
- In the etymology graph, Melinda, Melisa and Melina are forms of the same name in other languages; Mel, Missy and Missie are recorded short or pet forms.
What do you want to know about Melissa?
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/melissaThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Melissa” — the 59th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.