The name Mariah is of Hebrew origin and means ‘bitter’ or ‘wished for child.’ In the Bible, Mariah was an alternate name for Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron.
Mariah is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Mariah 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, Mariah ranks 164. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 11 were named Mariah. In the entire USA, approximately 109,607 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Mariah. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Mariah is a staple in the country: Girls have been given the name Mariah for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Mariah is therefore one of only 432 girls’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Mariah is a very special name, which reached its peak of popularity only in the last quarter of the 20th century, ranking in the top 100 girls' names in our SmartGenius statistics: With position 61 Mariah has never been more popular than back in 1998.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Mariah was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 921 babies were named Mariah in the USA in 2022, ranking it #313 on the list of the most popular girls' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 1962, when it was only ranked at #5,843 of all female names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 5 girls were named Mariah.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Mariah is one of them. However, Mariah is not equally widespread in all states, but people in New Mexico seem to particularly fancy this name – the 2,026 women called Mariah who live here are 0,256% of all female residents and push their name up to #97, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in New Mexico.
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 six letters, the name Mariah is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. 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 Mariah 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 Mariah, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Rocket
Igloo
Apple
Hat
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Mariah
Mariah
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
R
I
A
H
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
R
I
A
H
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. Mariah sounds like this:
