Image via Wikipedia

At first glance, she’s just a twist on the fading Alyssa, or maybe Melissa, deprived of her M.  But dig a little deeper, and she’s got regal roots.

Thanks to Serenity for suggesting Elissa as Baby Name of the Day.

Before Dido was a pop singer, she was the founding Queen of Carthage.  The stories present her as clever, courageous, and loyal.  She appears in Virgil’s Aeneid, as well as Ovid’s Heroides.  Some sources also call her Elissa.  It may be that Dido was the name she wore as queen, while Elissa was her birth name, but that’s speculation.  After all, the civlization was founded sometime around 800 BC; the Romans had completely destroyed Carthage by around 150 BC.

The tale that stays with us is the one of Dido’s death.  In some accounts, a neighboring king demands her hand in marriage.  Dido is already wed, and after negotiations disintegrate, saves her city by commiting suicide.  Virgil’s account is different, though it also ends with Dido on the funeral pyre.  In the Aeneid, Dido has fallen madly in love with Aeneas.  When the gods tell him he has to move on, Dido decides she cannot.  Cue the flames.

Her story was popular during the Renaissance and beyond.  Dante met Dido in the second circle of hell in his fourteenth century Divine Comedy.  Five hundred years later, the story was still inspiring the composition of operas.  Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens told her story in 1860.  A tall ship built in Scotland in 1877 was named Elissa.  You can still sail her today, from Gavelston, Texas.

While she’s called Elissa in early historical accounts, by the time we reach the dozen or more operas about her life, that name has disappeared almost entirely, in favor of Dido.

Look up Elissa in nearly any baby name book, and if you find her, she’ll be clustered with Alyssa, or maybe Elizabeth.

But neither of those make sense if she’s such an ancient name.  The Phoenician Elishat, related to the god El, seems a more likely source.  Zeus and Jove get all the press, but El was the supreme deity in the ancient near east, worshipped by the Canaanites and many other long lost civilizations.  Should that strike you as too pagan a reference, it’s equally true that the Hebrew writers of the Tanakh used the term to refer to Yahweh.  From Elizabeth to Joel to Elijah, the element endures in many modern names.

What’s more, Elissa appeared in the US Top 1000 as early as 1933, and lingered on the fringes of the rankings for decades before Alyssa appeared.  In this case, we can almost certainly attribute her rise to Hollywood. Italian-born actress Elisabeth Kühnelt had a number of notable appearances in films in the 1930s as Elissa Landi.  That’s her in the picture above.

Alyssa’s first venture into the Top 1000 didn’t come until 1963, so it is hard to see Elissa as a riff.  And Elissa’s peak – #496 in 1979 – took place while Alyssa was leaping up the popularity charts.  By 2005, Elissa left the rankings, while Alyssa remains in the US Top 20 today.

Variant Elyssa seems more closely related to Alyssa’s rise.  She appeared in the rankings just a handful of times between 1990 and 2005.  But the most famous bearer of the name, actress Elyssa Davalos, was born in 1959, and could be seen on television and movies alike in the 1970s.

One Elissa has even formed an organization for women sharing the name. She organizes an occasional gathering – where else?  Aboard the ship!

It’s a fun, obscure choice, and gives you the current nickname Ellie.  But you’ll have to content yourself with knowing that few will recognize your ancient reference and some might praise your inventive spelling.