Mary
Meaning
bitter; beloved
Goes by Mae, Mamie, May, Molly, and 1 more
Famously borne by Mary Cassatt, the only American to exhibit with the French Impressionists in Paris.
The story
Mary is the great matriarch of American girl names. It comes from the Hebrew Miryam, a name whose original sense scholars still debate, with bitter and beloved both offered in the old readings, and the mother of Jesus carried it into nearly every language on earth: Maria, Marie, Máire, Masha. For generations it was less a choice than a default; Mary was the number one girls' name in America through the entire first half of the twentieth century, so common that a single classroom might hold three or four. The long slide since the 1960s says less about the name than about parents' new hunger for variety, and even now Mary has never come close to disappearing, holding a quiet, steady place in the records. Few names carry this much history this lightly: two syllables, twenty centuries, still going.
Mary around the world
One shared root links 17 names across 9 languages.
Shared root: from Hebrew Miryam, its meaning long debated; traditional glosses run "bitter" and "beloved", with an Egyptian root meaning "love" also argued
The constellation
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Mary peaked in the 1890s and the 1910s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
20,937 people · the #1,030 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 9,709 · median age 48
Among people named Mary living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1960s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 435 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Mary
Most people given the name Mary in the United States were born between 1940 and 1979. The Mary you meet today is most often in her 60s or 70s.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Mary deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Mary truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Mary fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Nicknames for Mary · Saint names for babies and confirmation · Names of kings and queens · Names of great artists · Short names
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