Marissa is a variant of Marisa, originally an Italian, Spanish and Portuguese name, that combines Maria and Louisa. It has many meanings, for example ‘sea of bitterness’ or ‘the exalted one’.
Marissa is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Marissa isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Marissa ranks 497. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 4 were named Marissa. In the entire USA, approximately 118,257 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Marissa. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.
Marissa is a variant of Marisa, originally an Italian, Spanish and Portuguese name, that combines Maria and Louisa. It has many meanings, for example ‘sea of bitterness’ or ‘the exalted one’.
The long form of this... combination of names is also popular in English: Mary-Louise, nicknamed 'Mary-Lou', is a popular name for girls.
Everyone knows her, everyone loves her and still she’s different from the mainstream: Marissa occurs in every single state of the U.S. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Marissa is definitely something very special. However, at the same time, since the name does not appear in the top 100 most common first names in any single state, Marissa is not one of those names that one encounters in every neighbourhood, but stands out from the crowd, is noticeable and special without being strange or unknown. From Alaska to Florida, a total of 118,215 women and girls of all generations bear the name Marissa – that is one in 1,298. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in New Mexico, where one in 529 women and girls is called Marissa, while it is particularly rare in Washington, D.C., where you have to ask an average of 5,272 women for their name to get Marissa as an answer once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter M is a quite popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 8.5% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters A and S are more common for girls' names.
With seven letters, the name Marissa has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 8.5% of all girls' names start with an M, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the girls’ names starting with M is Mary.
If your name is Marissa and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Marissa, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Rocket
Igloo
Sun
Sun
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Marissa
Marissa
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
R
I
S
S
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
M
A
R
I
S
S
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Marissa sounds like this:
