Priscilla is an English female given name adopted from the Roman Priscilla, derived from the Latin priscus (old). 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. 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.
Diminutive forms of the name include Cilla, Pris, Prissy, Prisk, P, 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 (born 1989), French singer
- 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 (born 1965), singer from Hong Kong
- Priscilla Hill (born 1960), American retired figure skater
- Priscilla Horton (1818–1895), English singer and 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 Wakefield (1751–1832), English Quaker educational writer and philanthropist
- Priscilla Welch (born 1944), British marathon runner
- Priscilla Khristi, Indian public speaker