Melissa is a given name for a female child. The name comes from the Greek word μέλισσα (melissa), "honey bee", which in turn comes from μέλι (meli), "honey". In Hittite melit signifies "honey". Thus the name is the approximate Greek equivalent for the Hebrew name Deborah (דְּבוֹרָה), meaning bee.
Melissa also refers to the plant Melissa officinalis (Lamiaceae family), known as lemon balm.
Melisa is a common variant form, with others being Malissa, Melesa, Melessa, Meliza, Mellisa, Melosa, and Molissa.
In Ireland it is sometimes used as a feminine form of the Gaelic male name Maoilíosa, which means "servant of Jesus".
According to Greek mythology, perhaps reflecting Minoan culture, making her the daughter of a Cretan king Melissos, whose -issos ending is pre-Greek, Melissa was a nymph who discovered and taught the use of honey and from whom bees were believed to have received their name. She was one of the nymph nurses of Zeus, sister to Amaltheia, but rather than feeding the baby milk, Melissa, appropriately for her name, fed him honey. Or, alternatively, the bees brought honey straight to his mouth. Because of her, Melissa became the name of all the nymphs who cared for the patriarch god as a baby.
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Ibn Firnas is a lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon, in honour of Abbas Ibn Firnas, a polymath from Andalucia who, in the 7th century, devised a chain of rings that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars.
Attached to the exterior of its southwestern rim is the prominent crater King. Only a few kilometers to the north, separated by a rugged stretch of terrain, is the larger crater Ostwald. This is a worn and eroded crater with small impacts along the northern and eastern rims. The satellite crater Ibn Firnas L lies along the inner wall to the southeast and covers part of the interior floor. Along the northern side, the small satellite crater Ibn Firnas Y cuts through the rim and overlays part of the inner wall. The interior floor is irregular along the northern and southwest sections where their shape has been modified by the large nearby craters mentioned above. Several small craterlets lie across the remainder of the interior floor.
The Kasakela chimpanzee community is a habituated community of wild eastern chimpanzees that lives in Gombe National Park near Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. The community was the subject of Dr Jane Goodall's pioneering study that began in 1960, and studies have continued ever since. As a result, the community has been instrumental in the study of chimpanzees, and has been popularized in several books and documentaries. The community's popularity was enhanced by Dr Goodall's practice of giving names to the chimpanzees she was observing, in contrast to the typical scientific practice of identifying the subjects by number. Dr Goodall generally used a naming convention in which infants were given names starting with the same letter as their mother, allowing the recognition of matrilineal lines.
I never wanted any more than this
The lovely damage of a fatal kiss
Drop my defenses and my senses for you
And you promise to be true
I'll take the past and the pain
I'll take the hurt and the shame
I'll take the love and the hate
And your promises in vain
Your heart is haunted by a lover's ghost
You know the spirit
But you never met the host
I see it in your eyes
The things you can't disguise