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First of all, I don’t quite see your point: Who claims a Russian origin for LARIS(S)A? BTN obviously doesn’t.

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I spent some time on research on the original meaning of the name, too, and I came to the conclusion, that the answers are rather vague.
One thing you write is new to me: the “local fountain nymph” you talk about. I would be interested in seeing your sources for that. The only “water” part I could find, was the name of a river LARIS(S)OS in the northern part of the Peleponnese.

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Also, I have never come across LARA’s“official meaning … cheerful.” Unless LARA is a variant of LAURA, it is a short form of LARISSA. So here again, I would be interested in your sources.

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I cannot find an Ancient Greek word for laughter, that could serve as the origin of LARISSA. What I find is “gelao” for laugh. There is a word “laros,” however (with the stress on the second syllable), meaning “pleasant, delicious,” which semantically is not far away from “cheerfull” und “laughter.” A second Greek word “laros”(with the stress on the first syllabe) means “dove,” but my Greek dictionary gives completely different etymological derivations for the two words. Both of them, it seems, have been considered as a possible origin of the name LARISSA.

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BTN mentions “citadel” as the original meaning of the name of the city of Larisa, and that is what I ended up with as well. “Lerisai,” I found, was the “Ionic-Greek word for fortress.” The word is found in none of my dictionaries, and I don’t know much about Ionic Greek ...