Priscilla

Prisca,Priscilla
Gender	Female
Origin
Word/name	Roman
Meaning	venerable, ancient, classical, primordial [1]

Priscilla is an English female given name adopted from the Roman Prisca, derived from the Latin priscus . One suggestion is that it is intended to bestow long life on the bearer.

It appears in the New Testament of the Christian Bible variously as Priscilla and Prisca, a female leader in the early Church.^[2][3] The name appears in English literature in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) and was adopted as an English name by the Puritans in the 17th century. The use of the name began to decline during the 1960s, possibly because of an association with the slang term prissy, in the sense of meaning prim or prudish.^[4]

Diminutive forms of the name include Lily, Cilla, Pris, Prissy, Prisk, Pru/Prue and Scilla.

Priscilla may refer to:

• Priscilla, an early Christian of the Christian New Testament and companion to St. Paul; see Priscilla and Aquila
• Priscilla (Brazilian singer) (born 1990), Brazilian singer and songwriter
• Priscilla Betti (born 1989), French singer and actress
• Priscilla Ahn, singer
• Priscilla Alden (c. 1602-c. c. 1680), member of Massachusetts's Plymouth Colony, wife of John Alden
• Priscilla Barnes (born 1955), American actress
• Priscilla Bertie, 21st Baroness Willoughby de Eresby (1761–1828)
• Priscilla Chan (singer) (born 1965), singer from Hong Kong
• Priscilla Chan (philanthropist) (born 1985), philanthropist and wife of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg
• Priscilla Hill (born 1960), American retired figure skater
• Priscilla Horton (1818–1895), English singer and actress
• Priscilla Kemble (1756–1845), English actress
• Priscilla Lane (1915–1995), of the singing Lane Sisters
• Priscilla Leung (born 1961), Hong Kong legislator, barrister and associate professor
• Priscilla Lopez (born 1948), American singer, dancer and actress
• Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (born 1982), Canadian track and field hurdler
• Priscilla Martel (born 1956), American chef, food writer and consultant
• Priscilla Owen (born 1954), United States federal judge for the Fifth Circuit
• Priscilla Pointer (born 1924), American actress and mother of actress Amy Irving
• Priscilla Presley (born 1945), American actress and businesswoman and ex-wife of Elvis Presley
• Priscilla Cooper Tyler (1816–1889), former acting First Lady of the United States, the daughter-in-law of President John Tyler
• Priscilla J. Smith, American Lawyer and Activist
• Priscilla Wakefield (1751–1832), English Quaker educational writer and philanthropist
• Priscilla Welch (born 1944), British marathon runner

Prisca may refer to:

• Prisca (empress) (d. 315), Roman empress, wife of Diocletian and mother of Valeria Galeria
• Prisca (Prophet) (late 2nd century), Founding leader and prophet of Montanism
• Saint Prisca (late 1st century), Roman Catholic martyr and saint

See also

• List of biblical names
• Prisilla Rivera (born 1984), volleyball player from the Dominican Republic
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a 1994 Australian film of two drag queens and a transsexual woman's journey across the Outback.
• Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France, a book by Nicholas Shakespeare published in 2013

References

1. Harper, Douglas (November 2001). "Priscilla". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
2. Alexander, Joseph Addison (1857). The Acts of the Apostles explained, volume II. London: Nisbet.
3. Lee, Frank Theodosius (1913). The New Testament Period and Its Leaders. Sherman, French & Company. p. 323. A large share of this work evidently fell to Priscilla. That she possessed abilities of a high order would seem to be inferred from the fact that her name is always mentioned along with her husband's — in a number of instances is mentioned first.
4. Room, Adrian (2002). Cassell's Dictionary of First Names. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0-304-36226-3.