View Message

I don't think it's really clear that Tessa started out as a short form of Theresa. I can't find any evidence that Theresa or Teresa was in use outside of the Iberian Peninsula before St. Teresa de Avila became famous in the 1500s. But Tessa was in use in Italy a couple of centuries before that. The Italian name dictionary I own, Santi e Fanti by Enzo La Stella T., says that Tessa was regularly used in Tuscany in medieval times, and that it may have indeed been a short form of Contessa, because Conte, the Italian word for "count", was definitely used as a male given name in Italy during the same medieval time period. Tessa became fairly common in Tuscany partly because of Monna Tessa, who founded the Francisan Oblates in Florence. She died in 1327, and so predates Teresa of Avila by two centuries. La Stella says that in modern times Tessa is used in Italy as a shortened form of Teresa, but that that is a new usage, not based on the medieval use of Tessa as a name in Tuscany.

---

http://www.oblatedimonnatessa.org/italia/inglese.htm

---

And the form Tessa seems to have been introduced into England in the 19th century by novelists who used it as a name for Italian characters.

---

So all in all I think that Tessa is probably a name with two separate origins, and it is just as correct to say it is a medieval Italian name, probably a short form of Contessa, as it is to say it is a pet form of Theresa.

---