Holiday Calendar

National Melissa Day

Next celebratedThursday, May 27, 2027

A name-day observance on May 27 celebrating people named Melissa and the cultural history of the name.

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Last updated February 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEMay 27
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A name day with no documented author.

No documented founder or formal establishment record has been identified for National Melissa Day. It circulates on holiday-listing sites and social posts as an affectionate day for people named Melissa, and no primary source explains the choice of May 27.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

The name that means honeybee

Melissa is the ancient Greek word for honeybee. It comes from meli, the Greek word for honey, so anyone named Melissa carries a tiny piece of a beehive in their name. That is not a modern coincidence. The Greeks built it in on purpose.

In their stories, Melissa was a bee-nymph who knew the secret of honey. And the women who served as priestesses at the temple of Demeter, and at the oracle at Delphi, were known by the same word. They were called the Melissae. The bees.

National Melissa Day celebrates everyone who carries that name today. It is a light, unofficial observance with no committee and no founder behind it, which leaves the good part: a name with a three-thousand-year head start.

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ORIGINS

Melissa Day history

CHAPTER 01

A word for honey, then a word for bee

The trail starts with sweetness. The Greek name Melissa descends from meli, meaning honey, a root so old it reaches back through the Proto-Indo-European word for honey and surfaces in cousin languages across the ancient world. From meli the Greeks formed melissa, their word for the honeybee, the creature that makes the stuff. So the name did not start as a name at all. It started as a description of the insect that turns flowers into food.

That order matters. Honey came first in the language, then the bee, then the woman who carried the bee's name. By the time Melissa was a name a parent might give a daughter, it already trailed a sweetness behind it.

CHAPTER 02

The bee-nymph and the bee-priestesses

Greek mythology gave the word a face. Melissa, in the old stories, was a nymph who discovered and taught the use of honey, and the Greeks said bees themselves were named after her. One Cretan myth places her in the cave where the infant Zeus was hidden from his father Cronus, feeding the child honey while her sister handled the goat's milk. These are legends, not history, but they are the legends that gave the name its shape.

The word then climbed out of myth and into the temple. Real priestesses in the Greek world were called Melissae, the bees, especially those who served Demeter and Persephone and the priestess of Apollo at Delphi. An old gloss says they earned the title for the purity of the bee. So for a stretch of antiquity, to be a Melissa was to be holy.

CHAPTER 03

The herb that kept the bee

The name left one more fingerprint, this time in a garden. The lemon balm plant is known to botanists as Melissa officinalis, and it carries the very same root for a very practical reason: bees love its flowers. The Greek thinker Theophrastus called it the bee-leaf around 300 BC, and the Elizabethan herbalist John Gerard noted in the 1590s that it draws honeybees to it. The name Melissa and the plant Melissa are not lookalikes that happen to share spelling. They share an ancestor, and that ancestor is the bee.

CHAPTER 04

A name without a holiday on record

National Melissa Day itself has no such paper trail. No founder, no proclamation, no record explaining why it lands on May 27. It belongs to the loose family of internet name days, the affectionate little observances that circulate on holiday sites and social feeds without anyone in charge. The honest version of its story is short: people named Melissa have a day, and the day points back at a name far older than the celebration around it.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Melissa Day

Meaning

Melissa is one of the rare names a person can fully unpack.

Most given names have lost touch with their origins. Melissa has not. Its meaning, honeybee, is sitting right there in plain Greek, which makes it one of the rare names a person can fully unpack without a dictionary of dead roots.

Reach

It marked a generation

For the whole of the 1970s, Melissa was the third most popular girls' name in the United States, given to more than 250,000 babies in that decade alone. A name day for Melissa is, in effect, a day for a huge cohort of women who came of age together.

Echoes

The same word, everywhere

The honeybee root did not stay in one place. It named a nymph, a class of priestesses, a garden herb, and millions of people. Tracing where the word Melissa turns up is a small tour through myth, botany, and the American baby-name charts.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Melissa Day by the Numbers

#3
Melissa, US girls' name rank, 1970s
253,267
US girls named Melissa in the 1970s
#2
Melissa's peak US rank, 1977 to 1979
~30,000
US girls named Melissa in 1979 alone

TIMELINE

Timeline

The bee-leaf

The Greek thinker Theophrastus refers to the lemon-balm plant as the bee-leaf, an early sign of the bee-and-honey idea bound up in the word Melissa.

Gerard's note

The Elizabethan herbalist John Gerard records that lemon balm, Melissa officinalis, attracts honeybees, tying the plant's name to the insect once more.

Peak of the wave

Melissa reaches its all-time high in the United States, ranking second among girls' names for three straight years.

A Grammy for a Melissa

Melissa Etheridge wins the Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for "Come to My Window."

The Melissa virus

Programmer David Lee Smith releases a macro virus he names Melissa; it becomes the fastest-spreading infection of its time and causes an estimated $80 million in damage.

An Oscar nomination

Melissa McCarthy earns an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in "Bridesmaids."

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Melissa Day

The priestesses were the bees

The priestesses of Demeter and the priestess of Apollo at Delphi were called Melissae, the Greek word for bees. The name on the temple roll was the same word that meant honeybee.

Lizzo is a Melissa

The pop superstar Lizzo was born Melissa Jefferson. The stage name is invented; the given name underneath it is Melissa.

One of the web's worst viruses shared the name

The 1999 Melissa virus hijacked Microsoft Word and Outlook to mail itself to the first fifty contacts in a victim's address book. The FBI says its creator named it for a stripper in Florida.

Honey is older than the bee in the word

In Greek, the word for honey, meli, came first. The word for the bee, melissa, was built from it. So the name literally means the honey-maker, not just the insect.

The herb and the name are relatives

Lemon balm, Melissa officinalis, was given that genus name because bees swarm its flowers. It is not a coincidental spelling; it is the same honeybee root as the name.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

The lemon-balm plant Melissa just happens to share a spelling with the name.

The truth

They share an origin, not a coincidence. Both come from the Greek word for honeybee, and the plant got it because bees are drawn to its flowers.

The myth

Melissa is named after the famous 1999 computer virus.

The truth

It is the other way around. The name is thousands of years old; the virus was named in 1999 by its creator, reportedly after a dancer he knew.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Melissa Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Tell a Melissa what her name means

Most people named Melissa have never heard that it is the Greek word for honeybee. It is a small, genuinely pleasant thing to pass along.

PUT

Put honey on the table

The name traces straight back to meli, the Greek word for honey. Honey on toast, in tea, or drizzled over fruit is the most on-theme way to mark the day.

GROW

Grow a little lemon balm

Melissa officinalis is easy to grow on a sill or in a pot, and its leaves carry a bright lemon scent. You will be keeping company with the plant that shares the name.

READ

Read up on the bee-nymph

The Greek myth of Melissa the honey-nymph and the Melissae priestesses is a short, strange story worth ten minutes. It is where the name picked up its meaning.

SEND

Send the day to the Melissas you know

It is an affectionate internet name day with no rules. The simplest celebration is just letting the Melissas in your life know the day exists.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Melissa Day?

1 / 8

What does the name Melissa mean in Greek?

Answer

Melissa is the Greek word for honeybee, from meli, the Greek word for honey.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

9sources
2primary records
1independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Social Security Administration
Top Names of the 1970s
Official US baby-name dataset showing Melissa ranked third among girls' names for the 1970s decade, with 253,267 births, behind only Jennifer and Amy.
View source
Federal Bureau of Investigation2019-03-25
The Melissa Virus
The FBI's account of the 1999 Melissa macro virus, including that creator David Lee Smith named it for a Florida stripper, its Word and Outlook spread, the roughly $80 million in damage, and his conviction.
View source
Additional coverage
Online Etymology Dictionary
Melissa (name origin)
Traces the name from Greek melissa, honeybee, from meli, honey, back to the Proto-Indo-European root for honey, and notes the word also meant a priestess of Delphi.
View source
Wikipedia
Melissa (mythology)
Describes Melissa the nymph who discovered the use of honey and after whom bees were said to be named, and the Melissae priestesses of Demeter, Persephone, and the Delphic Apollo.
View source
Wikipedia
Lemon balm
Documents that the genus name Melissa derives from the Greek word for honeybee because the plant attracts bees, with Theophrastus's bee-leaf reference and John Gerard's 1590s note.
View source
Wikipedia
Melissa
Gives the name's etymology from Greek mélissa, bee, from meli, honey; its US popularity peak at second place by 1977 with well over 30,000 girls named in 1979; and notable people named Melissa, including Lizzo (Melissa Jefferson).
View source
Behind the Name
Popularity of Melissa in the United States
Renders Social Security Administration data showing Melissa ranked second among US girls' names for 1977, 1978, and 1979, its all-time peak, dropping to fourth in 1980.
View source
Wikipedia
Come to My Window
Documents Melissa Etheridge's 1995 Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the song.
View source
Wikipedia
List of awards and nominations received by Melissa McCarthy
Records Melissa McCarthy's Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Bridesmaids (2011).
View source
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