Ilissa
Meaning of Ilissa
Ilissa, a modern echo of Elissa—the fabled Phoenician queen who raised Carthage’s first walls—and a graceful variant of the Hebrew Elisheba, whose name proclaims “God is my oath,” carries within its syllables the hushed resonance of ancient devotion. It drifts across the senses like mist upon a moonlit Zen garden, each initial [ɪ] unfurling as a single sakura petal borne on the breath of an evening breeze, while its concluding [sə] settles with the soft gravity of river stones polished beneath Kyoto’s silent waters. Though in American birth records it appears only sparingly—its annual occurrences seldom climbing into the double digits and its rank lingering near the eight-hundredth—its rarity bestows upon its bearer an air of serene singularity. Woven through Ilissa’s lilting cadence is a tapestry of myth and modernity, a name that evokes the stillness of bamboo shadows and the promise of dawn reflected in tranquil ponds. At the threshold of past and promise, Ilissa stands as an expansive refrain, a whispered testament to heritage and the luminous possibilities yet to unfold.
Pronunciation
English
- Pronunced as ih-LIH-suh (/ɪˈlɪsə/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
