Karissa is a variant of Carissa, a name usually traced to the Greek charis, "grace", or to the Latin carissima, "dearest", and promoted by Edmund Spenser's Charissa in The Faerie Queene. It flourished in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s alongside Marissa and Clarissa. Karissa stood at number 434 in 2000, left the top 1000 shortly afterward and has drifted down to number 2915 in 2025 with 58 births.