Vanessa

Where the name comes from

• English (literary coinage)
  No meaning as a word. The Irish writer Jonathan Swift made it up as a nickname for one woman.
  Van (from the surname Vanhomrigh) + Essa or Hessy (a pet form of Esther)
  Swift coined the name around 1711 for Esther Vanhomrigh, an Irish woman of Dutch descent he had tutored. He took the 'Van' from her last name and joined it to 'Essa,' a pet form of her first name. He used it in private letters and in his poem 'Cadenus and Vanessa,' written about 1713. Most accounts say the poem was first printed in 1726, after her death. Popular meaning (not the true origin): 'butterfly.' Many American baby-name books say Vanessa is a Greek word for butterfly. Name scholars have shown this is wrong: Swift's name came first, and the butterfly genus came later. Popular meaning (not the true origin): 'from the star.' This comes from reading 'Van' as Dutch 'from' and linking 'Essa' to Esther, a name often traced to a Persian word for 'star.' Swift never meant Vanessa to carry that meaning.

Vanessa across traditions

• English and Irish literature. Vanessa is one of the few common names with a known inventor. It began as Swift's private name for Esther Vanhomrigh. Their troubled relationship is the subject of his poem 'Cadenus and Vanessa.' In that title, 'Cadenus' is a scrambled form of the Latin 'Decanus,' meaning 'dean,' which was Swift's own title.
• Natural history. In the early 1800s, the Danish entomologist Johan Christian Fabricius gave the name Vanessa to a group of butterflies. The group includes the red admiral and the painted lady. Nobody knows for sure why he chose it. One name scholar argues he probably took it from Swift's poem. This butterfly link is where the popular 'butterfly' meaning comes from.
• United States. Vanessa was rarely used in the US before 1950. Its use grew steadily after that. Popularity: highest in the 1980s, when it ranked #48 among girls' names for the decade (SSA).
• Spanish-speaking and Latin American communities. The name is used in Spanish both as Vanessa and in the one-s spelling Vanesa. In Spanish it is said 'bah-NEH-sah.'

Who carried it

• Esther Vanhomrigh (about 1688–1723): The first Vanessa. Jonathan Swift invented the name for her. She was his friend, student and correspondent.
• Vanessa Redgrave (born 1937): British stage and screen actress and Academy Award winner. Her fame in the 1960s and 1970s made the name widely known.
• Vanessa Williams (born 1963): American singer and actress. In 1983 she became the first Black woman crowned Miss America.

Forms in other languages

Vanesa, Venessa, Vannessa, Nessa, Ness

Vanessa 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.