Priscilla

Priscilla is an English female given name adopted from the Roman Priscilla, derived from the Latin priscus (old).^[1] 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.^[2] The name appears in English literature in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen (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.^[3]

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

Priscilla may refer to:

• Prisca (empress) (d. 315), Roman empress, wife of Diocletian and mother of Valeria Galeria
• Saint Prisca (late 1st century), Roman Catholic martyr and saint
• Priscilla, an early Christian of the Christian New Testament and companion to St. Paul; see Priscilla and Aquila
• Priscilla (French singer) or Prissou (b. 1989), French singer
• Priscilla Ahn, singer
• Priscilla Alden (c. 1602-c. 1680?), member of Massachusetts's Plymouth Colony, wife of John Alden
• Priscilla Barnes (b. 1955), American actress
• Priscilla Bertie, 21st Baroness Willoughby de Eresby (1761-1828)
• Priscilla Chan (b. 1965), singer from Hong Kong
• Priscilla Hill (b. 1960), American retired figure skater
• Priscilla Horton (1818-1895), English singer and actress
• Priscilla Lane (1915-1995), of the singing Lane Sisters
• Priscilla Leung (b. 1961), Hong Kong legislator, barrister and associate professor
• Priscilla Lopez (b. 1948), American singer, dancer and actress
• Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (b. 1982), Canadian track and field hurdler
• Priscilla Martel (b. 1956), American chef, food writer and consultant
• Priscilla Owen (b. 1954), a United States federal judge for the Fifth Circuit
• Priscilla Pointer (b. 1924), an American actress and mother of actress Amy Irving
• Priscilla Presley (b. 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 Wakefield (1751–1832), English Quaker educational writer and philanthropist
• Priscilla Welch (b. 1944), British marathon runner

See also

• Prisilla Rivera (b. 1984), volleyball player from the Dominican Republic

References

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