Melissa

Where the name comes from

• Ancient Greek
  honeybee
  melissa (Attic melitta), from meli, melitos "honey"; Proto-Indo-European *melit- "honey"
  etymonline also records the sense "one of the priestesses of Delphi." Smith’s 1849 gloss of the nymph’s name, "the soother or propitiator," is a mythographic reading, not the etymology.

Melissa across traditions

• Ancient Greek myth and cult. Melissa was a nymph "who discovered and taught the use of honey"; the nymphs who nursed the infant Zeus were called Melissae. The name passed to priestesses, especially of Demeter, Persephone and Delphian Apollo (Smith’s Dictionary).
• Jewish / Hebrew parallel. Semantic twin of the Hebrew name Deborah, "bee" (BDB; Yonge). A parallel name, not a form of Melissa.
• European. In use as a given name in German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish and Finnish; in Finland, 330th most common female name.
• United States (SSA). 735,299 combined births, 1950s–2010s. #158 (1950s), #33 (1960s), peak #3 in the 1970s (253,267), #7 (1980s), #31 (1990s), #102 (2000s); out of the top 200 in the 2010s.

Who carried it

• Melissa of Corinth (born Lysis), wife of Periander (Archaic Greece, tyranny of Periander at Corinth (exact dates not verified)): Daughter of Procles of Epidaurus; killed by Periander, as Herodotus relates (3.50, 5.92).

Forms in other languages

Melitta, Mel, Missy

Melissa 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.