A female name. (French Marie, It, German Maria, Rlus Marya, Masha); Hebrew 'rebellion’. This is the same as Miriam (q.v.), the name of the sister of Moses and Aaron. The consonants of the Hebrew word are M-R-Y-M, and when vowels were inserted in about the 7th C it became Miryam; the Septuagint, however, vocalized it as Μαριάμ (Mariam), and this is the usual form in the Greek New Testament both for the Blessed Virgin and for Mary sister of Lazarus, while Μαριά (Maria) is most often used for the other Marys. The Vulgate (probably owing to a mistaken idea that Mariam was an accusative in -am) adopted Maria for all of them. The name of the Blessed Virgin was long held to be too sacred for common use. The Sienese, for example, would allow no woman so named to practise the calling of a prostitute. In Spain, girls whom it was wished to place under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin were given names connected with her life or attributes, e.g. Dolores, Mercedes, Asunción, &c. From the 12th C, however, the name Mary gradually came into use in western Europe, and its growing popularity reflects the growing devotion felt to her. It is an indication of that growth that Bede in his list of churches gives only 3 dedicated to Our Lady; such dedications increased from the 12th C onwards, and there are now twice as many of them as of the next most common, those to St Peter. Mary is first found as a christian name in England at the end of the 12th C; the diminutive Mariot is found about the same time; its use increased slowly during the next 3 centuries, Mary, Mariot, Marion, and the nicknames Mall and Moll (cf. Hal from Harry) becoming moderately common and giving rise to such surnames as Maris, Marrison, Marrian, Marriot, Marriott, Marryat, Malleson, Mollison, &c. Mary suffered an eclipse after the Reformation and was seldom used during Elizabeth’s reign; it began to come back into use in the middle of the 17th C, and by the middle of the 18th C nearly 20 per cent. of female children in England were baptized in this name. In Ireland, where a quarter of the women are now called Mary, it was hardly used before the 17th C. In Irish Muire is the form used for Our Lady, Maire or Moire being the christian name. Several of the diminutive and pet- forms of the name are noticed separately, e.g. Marion, Mariel. Mariot, which was the most usual diminutive in the Middle Ages, was used in Cornwall as late as 1725, but has now long been obsolete. Mally, which was formerly much commoner than Molly, died out at the end of the 18th C. Polly is a rhyming nickname formed from Molly (cf. Peg from Meg). The French Marie, Mariette, Marianne, Manon are all occasionally used in England. For Maria see separate article. May is a late- 19th-C coinage. The use of Mary as a second name (for men as well as women) arose on the Continent in Roman Catholic countries in the 16th C, and has often been adopted by English Roman Catholics.

Maria Curia Regis Rolls 1203-10. Mariota Curia Regis Rolls 1205, 1210, Hundred Rolls 1273. Mary Promptorium Parvulorum c. 1440. Malkyn Coventry Mysteries 15th C.

The English form of Maria (q. v.). The earliest form is Miriam (q. v.); either cognate or identical is the (? obsolete) Hebrew Marah: these two forms may have sug- gested the Hebrew Mariamine). Miriam, says Gesenius, the great C18 German Orientalist, is Hebrew meri, ‘stubbornness,’ + the third person plural, thus, in all, ‘their rebellion’; most probably, however, it represents Hebrew marah, ‘bitterness’; in the Middle Ages it was more poetically and irrelevantly explained as ‘myrrh of the sea’, ‘lady of the sea’, ‘star of the sea’ (cf. the quotation at Maria), all prompted by mar, which in one form or another, means ‘the sea’ in Latin, Celtic, and Teutonic. From Mariam(ne) comes Maria, the first Occidental to bear the name being perhaps a Spanish maiden ‘martyred by the Moors at Cordova in 851’; the name began to flourish in Europe ca. 1250, as a result of the Crusades. ‘With us, the Blessed Virgin’s name, having come through the French, was spelt in their fashion (Marie) till the translation of the Bible made our national Mary familiar. Mary II was the first of our Queens who dropped the ie... Our Latin Maria is a late introduction, brought in by that taste which in (C18) made everything feminine end with an a’, though it was well known to the English aristocracy long before: was not Charles I’s queen named Henrietta Maria? (Yonge.)

Same as Maria; from Miriam. The nicknames or pet-names are Mall, Moll, Molly; by alliteration, Pal, Pol, Polly.

Hebrew (feminine) - Bitterness.

May'-re, exalted, bitterness of the sea, mistress of the sea. 1. The mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and a virgin. She was of the royal race of David. Luke i. 27. 2. The mother of John Mark, a disciple of the apostles. Acts xii. 12. 3. Mary, of Geophas. St. Jerome says, she bore the name of Cleophas either because of her father, or for some reason that cannot now be known. Others suppose, with greater probability, she was the wife of Cleophas, as our version of the New Testament makes her, by supplying wife. John xix. 25. It is thought she was sister of the Virgin; and that she was the mother of James the Less, of Joses, of Simon, and Judas, who in the Gospel are called the brethren of Christ. Matt. xiii. 55; xxvii. 56. 4. The sister of Lazarus and Martha; often confounded with that female sinner, spoken of Luke vii. 37 39. See John xi. 5. Mary Magdalene, so called, probably, from Magdala, a town of Galilee, of which she was a native, or where she had resided during the early part of her life. Out of her Jesus Christ cast seven devils. She is not that sinful woman mentioned Luke vii. 37. She followed Christ, and ministered to him, and attended him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and was at the foot of the cross. John xix. 25; Mark xv. 47.

Meaning: Greek for Miriam.

A Hebrew name, meaning: Bitter tears: bitter water. Some authorities give this as the Greek form of Miriam.