Melisa

About Melisa

Melisa is a form of Melissa, a Greek name meaning “bee.” It is established in Spanish, Bosnian, Albanian, Turkish, and Azerbaijani. The spelling brings an ancient name family into several modern language settings, with Turkish actress Melisa Sözen providing a notable contemporary bearer.

Meaning and language forms

Greek melissa is the word for a bee. The personal name appears in mythological traditions and later European literature, giving Melisa a history beyond its modern American use.

Melissa is the familiar double-s spelling in English, while Melisa is standard in several other languages. Turkish also has Melis, and German Melitta belongs to the same Greek name family.

Spanish Melisa is meh-LEE-sa, with three syllables and stress in the middle. In Turkish and Azerbaijani, the name uses the dotted i, written MELİSA in capitals. That spelling detail matters when moving between lowercase and uppercase forms.

Greek myth and literary history

In one Greek tradition, Melissa was the sister of Amalthea, and the two cared for the infant Zeus. Amalthea fed him milk while Melissa provided honey. The story places the name's bee meaning within a wider mythological association with nourishment.

Melissa was also used for nymphs and priestesses in Greek traditions. These connections concern the older name Melissa, whose language-specific forms include modern Melisa.

In Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Melissa is a fairy who helps Ruggiero escape from the enchantress Alcina. Her role gives the name another literary setting, this time within Italian Renaissance romance rather than Greek myth.

Melisa Sözen

Turkish actress Melisa Sözen plays Nihal in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

Nihal is the young wife of Aydin, a former actor who runs a small hotel in central Anatolia. The household also includes Aydin's recently divorced sister, Necla, and the relationships among them become increasingly strained as winter closes in.

The hotel becomes both a shelter and a place of confinement. The film's snowy landscape and enclosed domestic setting intensify the characters' arguments and conflicts, giving Sözen a central role in an internationally recognized Turkish drama.

The Palme d'Or was awarded to the film, rather than being an individual acting award for Sözen. Her appearance in it nevertheless brought this spelling of Melisa to a broad festival and cinema audience.

American popularity

Melisa's largest recorded American female birth count came in 1979, with 661 births and a rank of No. 350. It was recorded for 213 girls in 2000 and 129 in 2010.

In 2025, 57 girls received Melisa, placing it at No. 2,950. The exact spelling remains recorded, though at a much smaller level than during its late-1970s high.

How popular is Melisa?

In 2025, Melisa ranked #2,950 among girls in the United States, with 57 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1948; its largest annual count was 661 in 1979. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.