Asteroid 688 Melanie was discovered on August 25, 1909, by Johann Palisa at Vienna, Austria. It has a period of 4 years, 122 days, and is 30.8 miles in diameter. Who Melanie's namesake is unknown, but the name is of Greek origin and has been translated as "darkness", "clad in black," or "dark-skinned."
One famous woman named Melanie is actor Melanie Griffith. Another actor, Melanie Mayron, is somewhat less known; in the film Missing, she played a journalist investigating the case of an American the Pinochet regime in Chile made to vanish for opposing its policies.
Another well-known Melanie is rock singer Melanie Safka, who was most popular in the Sixties and early Seventies and goes by her first name only professionally.
60s rock singer Melanie (Safka)
Melanie, the singer, is noted for such flower-child tunes as "Brand New key," "What Have They Done To My Soul," and "Lay Down(Candles In The Rain)." She is a fairly prominent member of the Libertarian Party.
Melanie Wilkes is a character in Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With The Wind, a Southern belle who lost her husband Ashley in the Civil War.
Melanie Wilkes from Gone With The Wind
Astrologically, asteroid Melanie seems to indicate naivete, innocence, tenderness, vulnerability, being carefree, victimization, being "burned" or "stung" by the world and the impact of it. It can also serve as a personal-name asteroid for those named Melanie. It may also signify things pertaining to black people and other dark-skinned people such as American Indians and Hispanics, how dark-skinned people deal with the sociological ramifications of their color.
Melanie Safka has Melanie in the sixth house, conjunct Pluto; semisextile Don Quixote, sextile the Moon, Uranus and Neptune, trine Juno and Vesta, sesquiquadrate the Black Moon, and opposite the Sun and Hidalgo.
Intriguingly, Michael Jackson also has Melanie prominent—conjunct the Ascendant. A skin disorder called vitiligo has lightened his skin somewhat, but he has been accused of attempting to obliterate his Negroid features through plastic surgery and of being uneasy with being African-American. He professes an admiration of childhood, of naturalness, purity and innocence. He appears and sounds somewhat feminine, shy and(at one time) almost childlike. The scandals involving allegations of child molestation he has weathered were very traumatic for him.(And also for the boys involved in the scandal.) Jackson has Melanie not only conjunct the Ascendant, but conjunct Proserpina, Vibilia and Cheshirecat as well; sextile Yarilo, Ask and Cuitlahuac; square Pluto, Lilith, Hammurabi and Hebe; trine Don Quixote, Antenor and Nabokov; quincunx Aquilegia, Midas and McAuliffe; and opposite Madhatter.
Oprah Winfrey, a childhood sexual-abuse survivor whose talk show consciously steers toward the uplifting rather than the sordid a la Jerry Springer, also has Melanie prominent; in her chart, Melanie is conjunct the Descendant.
Acid-penned writer Dorothy Parker, who endured a lot of pain and trouble in her life, including numerous bad relationships, had Melanie rather widely conjunct Mercury, and also conjunct Asbolus, Ceres, Vesta, and Nyctimene; semisextile McAuliffe; septile the Part of Fortune; sextile Phaethon and Marathon; square Uranus, Bosque Alegre and the East Point; and quincunx Hylonome.
Vincent Van Gogh had Melanie in the twelfth house, conjunct the East Point, sextile Nyctimene, Yeti and Athanasia, quintile Venus and Mars, trine the Midheaven, Neptune and Aquilegia, quindecile Jupiter, and opposite Flood. Don McLean once sang about him:"The world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."
The glyph for Melanie is my own conception.
Click here for a summary of the movie Gone With The Wind. It includes a complete treatment of the role of Melanie Wilkes.
This link will take you to a sample of Melanie Safka's song lyrics.