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It's actually very pretty. But I'm old enough to remember the seventies, when it was extremely popular, so it will always seem overused and trite to me, even though it may not be used much nowadays. That's the problem with being given a popular, fashionable name. At some point everyone realizes that it IS popular, and then shy away from it. At that point it goes out of style. I have a name like that myself, popular at the time I was born, but now very out of style. Then people look at your name and think, "old-fashioned, typical post World War II, typical seventies," etc. and may dislike it just based upon that. Whenever I hear that someone doesn't like my name, ( actually, the only person IRL who has ever actually told me that is my mother-in-law, the old bat, but I've heard it on these boards) I always assume that that's the reason they don't, which may or may not be true. I think Melissa tends to fall into that category, along with Linda (40s and 50s) Jennifer (70s) and Ashley (80s). But in reality, it's really a very pretty name.