Alyssa
- Pronunciation
- [A-ly-ssa]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Rational
- Origin
- Greek
About the Name Alyssa
Alyssa descends from the Greek alyssos (the genus name of the small flowering plant alyssum, also called sweet alyssum), itself from a- (without) and lyssa (madness, rabies) — yielding the gloss "sane" or "without madness." The name was historically given because alyssum flowers were believed in classical antiquity to cure rabies. An alternative reading derives Alyssa from a creative blend or feminization of Alice/Alicia.
The name's modern English-language emergence is essentially a 20th-century American phenomenon, accelerating dramatically through the 1980s and 1990s. The single most influential modern bearer is American actress Alyssa Milano (born 1972), whose career through Who's the Boss? (1984–1992) and Charmed (1998–2006) anchored the name in millennial-era American naming. The Charmed character Phoebe Halliwell (played by Alyssa Milano) gave the actress and her name additional cultural visibility through the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Alyssa held a US top-25 girls' rank from 1995 through 2008 — over a decade of top-tier American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the popular -issa ending family (Melissa, Larissa, Alyssa, Carissa), the soft three-syllable structure, and the in-built positive register from the underlying "sane" or "flower" meaning. The name reads as both classical and contemporary American. Common nicknames Aly, Lyss, Liss, and the rare Saa each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Alissa, Alyssa, Alycia, and Alisha each have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Alissa (alternate American), Alise (German), and the related Alicia (Spanish/English) and Alice (English) family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Alyssa
US Popularity History (1986–2025)
Annual US births named Alyssa by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1999 with 14,036 girls named Alyssa (girl rank #11 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #453 for girls (680 US births). That's 442 places below its 1999 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.
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Where in the US Is Alyssa Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 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 Alyssa the strongest states are Alaska, California, New Mexico.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alaska | #112 | 41 |
| 2 | California | #130 | 2,638 |
| 3 | New Mexico | #170 | 73 |
| 4 | Florida | #175 | 1,027 |
| 5 | Texas | #177 | 1,822 |
| 6 | Connecticut | #183 | 146 |
| 7 | District of Columbia | #185 | 23 |
| 8 | South Dakota | #190 | 29 |
| 9 | New York | #201 | 908 |
| 10 | Hawaii | #208 | 20 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Alyssa in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Alyssa
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Alyssa.
- Alyssa Milano — TV Actress (1972)
Looking for names like Alyssa?
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.
Compare Alyssa to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Alyssa against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).