Vanessa

Named by Johan Christian Fabricius. New Latin, from the Ancient Greek deity Φάνης (Phánēs).

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In Orphic cosmogony, Phanes /ˈfeɪˌniːz/ (Ancient Greek: Φάνης, romanized: Phánēs, genitive Φάνητος) is a primeval deity who was born from the cosmic egg at the beginning of creation. Phanes was a deity of light and goodness, whose name meant "to bring light" or "to shine"; a first-born deity, he emerged from the abyss and gave birth to the universe. Nyx (Night) is said to be Phanes' older wife; she is the counterpart of Phanes and is considered by the playwright Aristophanes the first deity.

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Sources:
- https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Vanessa
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanes

Since it is a made up name it didn't mean or stand for anything, but a butterfly genus was similar to the name and so it, sort of by accident as I understand it, became to be known as a Greek word for butterfly.

According to a name meanings list at Holy Hill, WI, Vanessa is a Greek name meaning "butterfly".

If taken as a portmanteau of VAN [homrigh] + ES[ther],
The VAN morpheme means "From," & ESTHER means "star."

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So, a plausible meaning would be "starling, *" as in "from the stars." Taken further, it implies transcendence, like "transcendent beauty" or "transcendent wisdom," etc.

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|-essa| is also an earlier form of the contemporary feminine suffix |-ess|, but it doesn't form a meaningful context with VAN-/"from."

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*A starling is also a kind of bird, but that comes from an unrelated etymology.

Vanessa is originally a Greek word meaning butterfly. It is from the same root word for our words evanescent and vanish. The root vanescera means: to vanish. Butterflies have a tendency to vanish.

I love the name, it's beautiful and I love the meaning of it butterfly.

One time in my baby book I read it means butterfly.

In Hebrew Vanessa means star.

Vanessa does not mean "star" in Hebrew. Where do you people get this stuff?

In response to whether or not it means star in Hebrew, it sort of does, in a way. Technically Vanessa has no real meaning. But because the "ess" part was taken from the name Esther, it can be attributed, though not very correctly, Esther's meaning, and one of the posible meanings (though according to this website it's Persian) is "star."