Is Carissa in the Bible?

No one named Carissa appears in the Bible. Carissa is a spelling of Charissa, a name formed from the Greek charis, “grace.” The poet Edmund Spenser used Charissa in The Faerie Queene (1590) for the figure of Christian charity, and Carissa became common in the United States in the 1970s.

What does Carissa mean?

Behind the Name treats Carissa as a variant of Charissa, and Charissa as an elaborated form of Charis. Charis is the Greek word for grace, favor or kindness, and in Greek mythology it was also the name of one of the Graces. Carissa, Karissa and Charissa are spellings of the same name, and all three are pronounced ka-RISS-a in English.

Carissa is often said to be Latin for “dearest.” The Latin carissima does mean dearest, and the Italian cara, “beloved,” is the source of the separate name Cara, but Behind the Name gives Carissa no Latin origin. Clarissa is also a different name: it is a Latinate form of Clarice, from the Latin clarus, “clear, bright, famous.” Carissa is also the botanical name of a genus of thorny shrubs of Africa, Asia and Australia, with fragrant white flowers and plum-like fruit.

What does Carissa mean in the Bible?

Scripture never uses the name, but it often uses the word the name is built on. Charis is the New Testament’s word for grace and appears in it more than 150 times, as when Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). John’s Gospel uses the same word when it says that Jesus, the Word made flesh, was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Charissa in The Faerie Queene

In the first book of The Faerie Queene, the Redcrosse Knight is brought to the House of Holiness, kept by Dame Caelia and her three daughters, Fidelia, Speranza and Charissa. The names stand for faith, hope and charity, the three virtues Paul names together at the close of his chapter on love: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Corinthians 13:13, King James Version). In the poem the two elder sisters are unmarried, while Charissa is a wife and the mother of many children.

When did Carissa become popular?

Social Security records first rank Carissa among the 1,000 most common American girls’ names in 1970, at 827th. It rose steadily through the 1970s and 1980s and reached 240th in 1992, its highest rank. It then declined and left the top 1,000 after 2012. Charissa was always rarer, ranking between 1973 and 1986 and never higher than 778th. Karissa peaked at 306th in 1991.

Related reading

• Is Karissa in the Bible?
• What is God’s grace?
• Love in 1 Corinthians 13

Related reading

• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names