Alysa Wishingrad: Hello, my name is Alysa Wishingrad. My first name, Alysa, is spelled with one S and is often mispronounced as Alisa or Alicia. There's so many names like mine. A funny thing about my first name is though I did not meet another Alysa until I was about 13 years old, and now it's become a much more common name. My last name, Wishingrad, is a Russian or Ukrainian last name. I've always been led to believe that it means little city of cherry tree. So you would actually pronounce it VISH-na-crat.