Marisa
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-ri-sa]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Variant Of Maria.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Marisa
Marisa is a melodic variant of Maria, the Latin and Spanish form of the Hebrew name Miriam — a name of ancient but debated etymology, most commonly glossed as "beloved," "bitter," or "wished-for child," with none of these interpretations fully settled by modern scholarship. What is settled is its extraordinary reach: through its biblical bearer, the mother of Jesus, Maria became the most widely given name in the history of Western Europe, generating an enormous family of diminutives, elaborations, and compound forms across every Romance and Germanic language. Marisa softens the formal dignity of Maria with a flowing -isa ending that gives it a distinctly Italian and Iberian character, and it has been in use across Spain, Portugal, and Italy as an independent given name and as a short form of compound names like María Isabel for generations.
Marisa appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 2000, debuting at its peak rank of #302. It maintained a solid mid-list presence for over a decade: #817 in 2010, #858 in 2011, and #977 in 2012, the last year it appeared in the top-1000. Over its tracked run, approximately 8,674 babies received the name in top-1000 years. Recorded variants include Mareesa, Marisela, Marrisa, Marrissa, and Morisa.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Marisa
US Popularity History (2000–2012)
Annual US births named Marisa by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 1,052 girls named Marisa (girl rank #302 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2012, ranked #977 for girls (258 US births). That's 675 places below its 2000 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 Marisa Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2007–2016 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 Marisa the strongest states are New Mexico, Kansas, Connecticut.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Mexico | #313 | 45 |
| 2 | Kansas | #430 | 25 |
| 3 | Connecticut | #490 | 19 |
| 4 | Wisconsin | #530 | 60 |
| 5 | Ohio | #565 | 94 |
| 6 | Massachusetts | #571 | 48 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #624 | 31 |
| 8 | Washington | #631 | 40 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #650 | 77 |
| 10 | Nevada | #657 | 15 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | #844 | 23 |
| 2 | Georgia | #792 | 41 |
| 3 | Arizona | #792 | 50 |
| 4 | Texas | #788 | 234 |
| 5 | Virginia | #773 | 62 |
| 6 | Maryland | #764 | 40 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania | #734 | 101 |
| 8 | California | #728 | 339 |
| 9 | Florida | #721 | 130 |
| 10 | Indiana | #721 | 57 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2007–2016. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Marisa in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mareesa | Variant Of Maria. | Female | English |
| Marisela | Variant Of Marcella Of Mars. Mars Was Mythological Roman God Of Fertility For Whom The Month March Was Named: Mythologically Identified With The Greek War God Ares. | Female | Spanish |
| Marrisa | Female | English | |
| Marrissa | "Alternate Spelling: Maris, Marisa." | Female | Latin |
| Morisa | Feminine Of Maurice Dark:Dark-Skinned. | Female | Spanish |
Looking for names like Marisa?
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 Marisa to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Marisa against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).