Alyssa

Alyssa blooms from alyssum, a cluster of tiny white flowers whose Greek name a-lyssa meant without madness, a plant once believed to cure rabies. By the late twentieth century the name had shed its herbal backstory and become a soft, flowery favorite in the U.S., peaking in the 1990s as Melrose Place and Charmed's Alyssa Milano kept it on television screens. Ranked 399 today, it has eased into nostalgic territory without losing shape. Three syllables, a long whispered middle, a final A that closes like a sigh. Feminine, familiar, faintly sunlit, it still smells a little of garden walls.