梅利莎

The female name Melissa is rendered in Chinese as 梅利莎. These characters are chosen for their sound, not their meaning — together they approximate how Melissa is pronounced. In pinyin (the standard romanization of Mandarin) this reads Méi lì shā.

Character-by-character breakdown

In Chinese, Melissa is written with 3 characters, each standing for one syllable of the sound: 梅 (Méi), 利 (lì), 莎 (shā). Each character here is a phonetic unit — picked for how it sounds, not for what it means — so read together they echo Melissa rather than spelling out a literal meaning.

Origin & meaning of Melissa

Melissa is a name of Greek origin. From the Greek melissa, meaning "bee" or "honey bee."