9BabyNames Baby names with meanings & US popularity data

Alysa

Pronunciation
[A-ly-sa]
Gender
Female
Meaning
"Princess. Variant Of Alyssa, Alissa, Alisa."
Origin
Greek

About the Name Alysa

Alysa is a streamlined variant of Alyssa, part of the cluster of names linked to the Greek word for the alyssum flower and popularly interpreted as "princess" through its overlap with Alice and its relatives. By trimming the doubled letters, Alysa keeps the familiar, melodic sound while giving the name a cleaner, more modern silhouette on the page. It belongs to the broad late-twentieth-century wave of "-yssa" and "-isa" names that parents loved for their soft endings and feminine grace.

The spelling enjoyed a tidy early-2000s window in the United States. It first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000, reached its best rank of #737 in 2001, and dropped off after 2005, when it stood at #840. Altogether it was given to about 1,796 girls during its top-1000 years, the signature of a then-fashionable respelling that briefly shared the spotlight with the more popular Alyssa before easing back into rarer use.

Alysa pairs an established, friendly sound with the appeal of a simpler spelling, and it carries the same warm nickname options as its cousins, including Aly and Lyssa. Recorded variants include Aleeza, Alisa, Alissa, Alyssia, and Elissa, giving parents an unusually wide spectrum of looks, from Hebrew-flavored to classically Greek, for the same gentle and approachable name.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Alysa

1,029
Greek baby names in our dictionary
545
Greek female names
488
5-letter A-names in our dictionary
1,183
A-female names total
2000–2005
years of US SSA records (6 total)
1,796
total US births named Alysa (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2005)

📉 Falling fast: Alysa dropped 72 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#768 in 2000 → #840 in 2005).

Annual US births named Alysa by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2001 with 325 girls named Alysa (girl rank #737 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2005, ranked #840 for girls (302 US births). That's 103 places below its 2001 peak.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Alysa Most Popular?

Average girl-name rank within each state across 2001–2010 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Alysa the strongest states are Mississippi, Oklahoma, Wisconsin.

Strongest girls-name states

# State Avg rank Births
1 Mississippi #533 16
2 Oklahoma #606 18
3 Wisconsin #610 20
4 Alabama #643 30
5 Colorado #646 30
6 Maryland #649 20
7 Missouri #652 34
8 North Carolina #673 37
9 Michigan #675 69
10 Louisiana #677 17

Weakest girls-name states

# State Avg rank Births
1 Arizona #865 61
2 New York #852 52
3 Illinois #848 64
4 Georgia #821 51
5 California #818 212
6 Texas #796 235
7 Ohio #769 77
8 Florida #748 152
9 Pennsylvania #734 66
10 Tennessee #728 30

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2001–2010. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Alysa in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

NameMeaningGenderOrigin
Aleeza Joy. Joyful. Female Hebrew
Alisa Of The Nobility. Female Spanish
Alissa Variant Of Alice. Female English
Alyssia Variant Of Alice. Female English
Elissa Variation Of Elizabeth. My God Is Bountiful:God Of Plenty. Female English

Looking for names like Alysa?

A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.

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Compare Alysa to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Alysa against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

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Alysa Baby Name Ideas