Jessica

Additional information: Jessica, a feminine name, was first coined by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice, and he most likely took it from the Hebrew name Iscah, which would have been written as ‘Iesca’ in Shakespeare’s day. The meaning of Iscah is ‘to behold’ or ‘foresight’. Jessica is also the feminine form of Jesse, Jesca, a name found in the Bible, as the name of Haran's daughter. These names are derived from the Hebrew 'yīshai', meaning "gift". Another explanation of the name is that it's another form of Jessie, or a pet form of Janet and Jean. Common nicknames and diminutives for Jessica are Jess, Jessie, and Jessa, and the most used alternative spelling is Jessika. Jessika is also the German spelling of the name; other foreign variants are Gessica (Italian), Iekika (Hawaiian), and Yessica (Spanish). Jessica is commonly misspelled as ‘Jesica’, ‘Jesscia’, and ‘Jessicca’.

Jessica was most popular in the USA from the late seventies until the late nineties, where it never fell out of the top ten feminine names and was the most popular name for girls between 1985 and 1990, and again between 1993 and 1995. The name also entered the top 1000 names for boys in the USA during the same time frame. Jessica’s popularity has fallen sharply since the start of the 21^st century – it has not been a popular masculine name since 1991, and it was the 179^th most popular name for girls in the USA in 2014. However, Jessica is still a very popular girls name in England and Wales, remaining in the top ten names since 1996, and sitting at sixth in 2013.

Famous people with the name Jessica include Jessica Ennis (British Olympic athlete), Jessica Simpson (American musician and actress), Jessica Alba (American actress), and Jessica Biel (American actress). Famous fictional characters named Jessica include Jessica Rabbit from the Roger Rabbit franchise, Jessica Sanders from Heroes, and the origin of the name, the daughter of Shylock from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

There is an urban legend that, in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the animators included a few frames of Jessica Rabbit not wearing underwear. The frames in question are, most likely, an incident of forgetting to colour in the underwear and instead leaving it the colour of her skin, but this legend persists as the animators providing tongue in cheek Easter eggs for eager eyed viewers – as the frames need to be viewed frame by frame to catch it, this seems unlikely.