Melinda

Melinda is an eighteenth-century literary confection, probably stitched from the Greek meli, honey, with the suffix -inda that playwrights of the age were fond of — Clarinda, Belinda, Dorinda all belong to the same family. It entered English novels and operettas first, then quietly slipped into real-world nurseries, peaking in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. Philanthropist Melinda French Gates has given the name a twenty-first-century sheen. Three syllables, meh-LIN-dah, balanced and melodic. The name reads gentle and capable at once, the sort of woman who runs a foundation and still remembers to ask about your mother.