Vanessa (name)

Common card · No. 209534

Vanessa is a feminine given name. It was created by the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh, whom Swift had met in 1708 and whom he tutored. The name was created by taking "Van" from Vanhomrigh's last name and adding "Essa", a pet form of Esther. Van is a preposition in Dutch surnames that means "of" or "from", and Esther, from which Essa is derived, could be derived from the Old Persian stāra (NPer. ستاره setāra, meaning "star"). Thus, Vanessa could literally mean "from the star". In 1726, the name Vanessa appeared in print for the first time in "Cadenus and Vanessa", an autobiographical poem about Swift's relationship with Vanhomrigh. Swift had written the poem in 1713, but it was not published until three years after Vanhomrigh died. Vanessa was adopted as the name of a genus of butterfly by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1807. Vanessa was the 71st most popular name for girls born in the United States in 2007. It has been among the top 200 names for girls in the United...

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