Name meaning and origin
Jessica
English: Probably from the biblical name Iscah
Pronounced JES-ih-kuh; Spanish-speaking families often say yeh-SEE-kah
Where the name comes from
- EnglishProbably from the biblical name IscahHebrew יִסְכָּה (Yiskāh); spelled Jescha or Jischa in some English Bibles of Shakespeare’s timeThe name first appears in this form in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596), for the daughter of Shylock. Hanks & Hodges (A Dictionary of First Names, 1990, p. 176) and Withycombe (Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 1945, p. 78) both connect it with Iscah, a daughter of Haran in Genesis 11:29. The Babylonian Talmud links Iscah with an Aramaic root meaning "to see"; that is a traditional interpretation of Iscah, not of the name Jessica itself.
Jessica across traditions
- English literature. Shylock’s daughter in The Merchant of Venice, who elopes with Lorenzo.
- United States. The most popular US girls’ name of the 1990s (SSA: 303,136 births), and second in New Mexico in 1993.
Forms in other languages
Jess, Jessie, Jessika, Jesica, Yesica, Jéssica (Portuguese)
Jessica in letter-number systems
Hebrew, Greek and other traditions gave every letter a number, and read meaning into the totals. These are the counts, computed; the readings are inside the Innerverse.
149
Hebrew Standard
5
Hebrew Ordinal
66
English Simple
396
English Sumerian
123
English Reverse
446
Greek Isopsephy
8
Chaldean
66
Pythagorean
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The Innerverse reads any name: its language of origin, its roots, who carried it, and how nine letter-number traditions count it.