BabyNameScoreName profile
Mary
feminine
This reflects the first name on its own. The full-name report scores the complete combination separately.
Check it with a full name ↓English form of Latin Maria, from Greek Mariam/Maria (Septuagint and New Testament), reflecting the original Hebrew מִרְיָם (Masoretic Miryam), the name of Moses's sister in the Hebrew Bible and, most famously, of Mary the mother of Jesus in the New Testament. The English spelling and pronunciation developed via Old French Marie into Middle English, with the current spelling standard from 16th-century English Bible translations (Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535).
Why it works
- English speakers will almost certainly pronounce it correctly on the first try
- spelling is short and predictable — rarely needs repeating
Popularity
Familiar — #125 in the latest U.S. ranking.
Meaning and origin
Mary's meaning is disputed among sources — the documented reading on file is that Mary means No single agreed meaning: proposed readings include 'beloved' (Egyptian-origin theory) and 'bitter' or 'rebellious' (Hebrew-root theories); the popularly cited 'star of the sea' is a documented scribal corruption of Jerome's original 'drop of the sea' gloss rather than a genuine etymology.
Carries deep Christian devotional weight alongside a long secular life as simply the default, everyday American girls' name of its era — a duality reflected in figures from the Virgin Mary to Queen Mary I ('Bloody Mary') to the ubiquitous fictional 'Mary' of nursery rhyme and film.
Documented origin: English form of Latin Maria, from Greek Mariam/Maria (Septuagint and New Testament), reflecting the original Hebrew מִרְיָם (Masoretic Miryam), the name of Moses's sister in the Hebrew Bible and, most famously, of Mary the mother of Jesus in the New Testament. The English spelling and pronunciation developed via Old French Marie into Middle English, with the current spelling standard from 16th-century English Bible translations (Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535).
How it travels
English and Turkish are shown by default; German is included when it adds a meaningfully different reading.
Spelling stability: high — based on letter-pattern analysis, not a documented linguistic fact.
Also documented
British RP: /ˈmɛəri/ (British RP)
/ˈmæri/ (some US regional accents, merging with 'marry')
note: in many North American dialects 'Mary,' 'marry,' and 'merry' are homophones (the Mary-marry-merry merger), a well-documented regional pronunciation phenomenon rather than a mispronunciation
Popularity without panic
Familiar — #125 in the latest U.S. ranking.
Familiar enough to feel established, distinctive enough to stand out.
Full-name check
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Real-world considerations
- Familiar — #125 in the latest U.S. ranking.
- Spelling note: Confusion with Marie, Maria, Mari, and the archaic/poetic 'Marye'; also phonetic overlap with 'merry' and 'marry' in mergdesr dialects..
- As with Maria, Mary's ultimate meaning is not settled. The Catholic Encyclopedia's own detailed philological entry rejects several popular compound readings (like 'drop of the sea' or 'myrrh of the sea') as 'philologically inadmissible' and instead favors deriving Miryam from Hebrew roots meaning either 'rebellious' or 'well-nourished'/'the beautiful,' while separately documenting how the widely repeated title 'Star of the Sea' actually descends from a scribal error in transmitting Jerome's Latin gloss. In other words, even a strongly pro-Marian theological source declines to endorse the most popularly repeated meaning as etymologically genuine — this is a case where 'unknown' is the honest answer, and the memorable meaning in wide circulation should be labeled a traditional/devotional interpretation rather than a proven fact.