Vanessa

Vanessa is a literary coinage in English, invented by the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift in the early eighteenth century as an intimate nickname for his close companion Esther Vanhomrigh, formed by combining the first syllable of her surname with the common name suffix essa. Swift used the name in his 1726 poem Cadenus and Vanessa, and from there it gradually entered general use as a given name across the English-speaking world. The name also coincidentally became associated with a genus of butterfly named by the naturalist Johan Christian Fabricius in 1807, reinforcing its cultural visibility. Vanna and Nessa are common short forms.