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Mellissa

Girls' name

Bee, honey, or honeybee, through Melissa

Mellissa has been given to 5,625 babies in the U.S. since 1926. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1979, with 272 recorded.

Babies named Mellissa, 2018

1 in 703,000

Mellissa over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010020030018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Mellissa: meaning, origin, and history

Bee, honey, or honeybee, through Melissa

Ancient Greek

What Mellissa means

Mellissa belongs to the name family reached through Mellissa → Melissa. Its meaning is “bee, honey, or honeybee”.

Origin, language, and formation

Mellissa is used in English. Its origins include Ancient Greek.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Melissa.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 5,625 girls were recorded with the name Mellissa between 1926 and 2018. Its highest annual count was 272 in 1979; its best national rank was #641 in 1979.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Mellissa?

Mellissa had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2018, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2018
1 in 703,000
5 of 3,516,853 births
Among girls only
1 in 340,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2018
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
487,541 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Mellissa sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2018 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 487,541 children born in 2018 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Mellissa. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Mellissas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Mellissa was born before 1979 — so the typical Mellissa is around 46 today.

Median birth year
1979
About 46 years old
Biggest decade
1970s
34.2% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
9.8%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
5,615
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1970s — 34.2% of all recorded uses (1,921).

Is Mellissa rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1979 (272)
Years since peak
46
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
19.7% average annual change
Best rank ever
#641
1979

Spellings of Mellissa

Mellissa is not the most common spelling — Melissa is, with 91.4% against Mellissa's 0.68%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Mellissa is used

Across 1910–2025, Mellissa was most concentrated in California — about 1 in 25,000 girls, against 1 in 44,594 across all states with data. It was least common in Maryland (1 in —).

04 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1California1 in 25,000
  2. 2Florida1 in 25,000
  3. 3Massachusetts1 in 25,000
  4. 4Michigan1 in 25,000
  5. 5Ohio1 in 25,000
  6. 6Indiana1 in 33,333
  7. 7New Jersey1 in 33,333
  8. 8Washington1 in 33,333

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Mellissa has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Mellissa around the world

Where Mellissa ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    1996–2015
    #4,736
    in 2015
  • Scotland
    1982–2000
    #456
    in 2000
  • Ireland
    1976–1994
    #502
    in 1994
  • France
    1990–2017
    #6,222
    in 2017
  • Canada
    1991–2005
    #2,482
    in 2005
  • South Australia
    1964–2002
    #730
    in 2002

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland, Central Statistics Office, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, Statistics Canada and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS, NRS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. CSO, CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Notable people named Mellissa

People whose public names include Mellissa, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Mellissa in other languages

Cross-language forms and variants of Mellissa. Linked forms have their own page here.

MelissaMellisa

Variant forms from Wikidata (CC0). Most are used mainly outside the United States; U.S. birth records statistics cover US usage only.

Mellissa by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#641
1979
Peak year
1979
272 that year
First recorded
1926
Last recorded
2018
All-time count
5,625
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Mellissa

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

MelyssaMelessaMelonieMelannieMelaniaMelisssaCharissaMelodieMelodeeMelaniMellanieMelonyMelissaKlarissaTeressaMelvinaAllyssaMellisaMelainaYulissaMeliaMelroseMelissiaMellie

Names with a curve like Mellissa

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Mellissa, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

StephenieBrianDanelleEricJenniCheriseJammieKeliSharaAdrianeSharondaCory

Sibling names for Mellissa

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Mellissa

Top names of 1979, Mellissa's peak yearThe 1970s in fullOther names that peaked in 1979Girls' names starting with M