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Santi e Fanti by Enzo La Stella T., the Italian first name dictionary I own, lists Gèssica and says it is a phonetic form of the English name Jessica, though it also says it is rare in Italy. The book was copyrighted in 1993.

A good way to assess that sort of thing is to Google for the name in sites from that country. For example, I searched for:

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Gessica site:.it

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. . . which gives me all the instances of Gessica in websites from Italian domains. There were 48,900 hits, so I'd say it's a fair bet that Gessica is used in Italy. It's probably a relatively modern (ie 1900s) coinage to parallel the fact that Jessica became so popular in English-speaking countries; but I could be wrong about that.

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:-)

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♦ Chrisell ♦

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All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. - J.R.R. Tolkien.

This message was edited 12/13/2005, 6:51 PM

It looks to me like a creative spelling of Jessica.

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