The name Maia comes from Greek ‘maia’ meaning ‘good mother, foster mother’. In Greek mythology, Maia was a nymph and the mother of Hermes, the messenger of the gods.
Maia is a first name for girls.
The name Maia isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Maia ranks 492. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 4 were named Maia. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Maia.
Maia is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the past, the name wasn't really on the radar of expectant parents. Then, unexpectedly, Maia cried out for attention, reaching its peak in popularity at #387 in our SmartGenius statistics in the year 2022. People over 50 probably didn't have classmates named Maia, for there were many years in which not a single parent chose this first name for their daughter. Although it also has never been in the top 100 of most popular first names, Maia seems to have been in vogue for a while, especially since the beginning of the new millennium.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Maia was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter M is a quite popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 8.5% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters A and S are more common for girls' names.
With four letters, the name Maia is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 8.5% of all girls' names start with an M, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the girls’ names starting with M is Mary.
If your name is Maia and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Maia, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Igloo
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Maia
Maia
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
I
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
M
A
I
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Maia sounds like this:
