As many of you know I grew up in the late 1970s and 1980s, and you may find this hard to believe, but back then nobody was named Alissa (or Alyssa for that matter). I guess you could say that my parents were real trendsetters. No chance in hell you were finding that name on a souvenir keychain, but the even bigger problem was that a LOT of people simply couldn’t pronounce it.

I know it doesn’t look that difficult. Uh-liss-uh, right? But people like the familiar and this crazy newfangled name certainly wasn’t familiar back then. On a daily basis I was called Alicia, Alisha, Elyse, and Alison. Sometimes people would make a valiant effort to sound it out and then collapse halfway through. I give them points for trying.

Then in the fall of 1984 a new sitcom premiered and one of the stars was an actress named Alyssa Milano. Her sudden celebrity helped to introduce people to this tongue-twister of a name. Prior to the debut of Who’s the Boss? if my parents happened to overhear someone else in public that had the name Alissa/Alyssa it would be a drop-everything sort of moment where they would barge in on these strangers’ lives so that the two of us could meet each other. (Yes, this really happened.)

Although there were still relatively few Alissas my age, Alyssa Milano’s fame helped to inspire a younger generation of babies named Alissa or more often Alyssa. To the point that you could have multiple girls with the name in the same class, something that was unheard of in my day, back when teachers routinely confused me with girl’s named Alison because that was a name they knew how to pronounce.

Side note: I had a math teacher in middle school who insisted on calling me Alisha, because he “liked the way it sounded better”. And if you’re thinking, hmm that guy kind of sounds like a jerk I will add that he once got into a physical fight with a student. Later they would make him the principal.

By the time I was in my twenties and the name Alissa was commonplace, whether or not someone could pronounce my name served as a sort of litmus test for how old they were. The baby boomers were 50/50 on whether they could pronounce my name, the older generation was pretty much hopeless at pronouncing it and Gen X and younger had no problem at all, something which I attribute almost entirely to Alyssa Milano. So, thank you, Alyssa Milano!

—Alissa

Weekly Inspiration

What I’m Reading: A Sketchy Situationby Charlie O’Shields

What I’m Watching: Ride or Die

What I’m Listening to: “Think it Over” by The Thorns

Find out more about my books at alissagrosso.com

Find out more about my art at alissacarin.com