Humanverse

Melisa

About 19,121 American babies have been named Melisa since 1948, most of them around 1979. In 2025 it ranked 2,933rd. About 18,000 Melisas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 45.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Melisa boys named Melisa

By the numbers

Total US births
19,121
Estimated living today
18,000
Median age today
45
Peak year
1979
Best rank
350th
Rank in 2025
2,933rd
First recorded
1948
Girls / boys
19,111 / 10

How old the living Melisas are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 19,121 babies given the name since 1948, about 18,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 1,500 of them are children and 510 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1980 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Notable Melisas

People named Melisa with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Melisa is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Melisa is most concentrated in California (1.7×), Florida (1.6×), Texas (1.5×), Oregon (1.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1979

The most popular girls’ names the year Melisa peaked:

All the names of 1979

Melisa elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
France girls Melisa +1 spelling 2,030 632nd
England and Wales girls Melisa 1,381 562nd
Italy girls Melisa 1,045
Switzerland girls Melisa 1,002 119th
Poland girls Melisa +1 spelling 857 birth registrations 116th
Belgium girls Melisa 601 259th
Ireland girls Melisa 104 375th
Scotland girls Melisa 31 485th
Norway girls Melisa 18 364th
Northern Ireland girls Melisa 7 353rd

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Melisa: births by region

RegionCountry Spelling BirthsShare of the region Best rank
German girls Switzerland Melisa 796 0.064% 106th
French girls Switzerland Melisa 196 0.045% 116th
Italian girls Switzerland Melisa 10 0.015% 112th

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Melisa is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.10% of children were given it – 36 of them.

Melisa: rank by region

In 2025, Melisa was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Region Spelling Place Children
Flanders Melisa 753 6

In 2025, Melisa was given 2 times or more in 14 regions of Poland.

Region Spelling Place Children
Dolnośląskie Melisa 123 8
Kujawsko-Pomorskie Melisa 112 5
Lubuskie Melisa 100 4
Łódzkie Melisa 141 4
Małopolskie Melisa 120 11
Mazowieckie Melisa 116 21
Opolskie Melisa 123 2
Podkarpackie Melisa 78 11
Pomorskie Melisa 108 10
Śląskie Melisa 111 13
Świętokrzyskie Melisa 114 2
Warmińsko-Mazurskie Melisa 89 5
Wielkopolskie Melisa 110 12
Zachodniopomorskie Melisa 110 5

In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Melisa appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (342nd).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Melisa by city

CityYears BirthsBest rank
Berlin girls 2017–2023 83 149th

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Melisa among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Country Spelling First forename Any forename
Finland girls Melisa 306 418

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Melisa lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 3,401 women called Melisa were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Province Spelling People Per thousand Place there
Santa Cruz de Tenerife Melisa 183 0.330 353
León Melisa 66 0.287 418
Ourense Melisa 41 0.258 394
Pontevedra Melisa 124 0.253 394
Soria Melisa 11 0.248 388
Cuenca Melisa 24 0.243 424

Listed in 49 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 3 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

Melisa against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Melisa with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.