The first name Mary is the English variant of the name Maria. As the name of the mother of Jesus, it is considered a symbol of pure and deep love.
Mary is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Mary 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, Mary ranks 120. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 15 were named Mary. In total, there are currently 3,737,340 people – children, adults and seniors – named Mary living in the United States, which is approximately 1.1 % of the entire population.
The first name Mary is the English variant of the name Maria. As the name of the mother of Jesus, it is considered a symbol of pure and deep love.
By the way... according to the Aramaic word 'mirjam' and the Egyptian word 'mry', Mary might also mean 'the bitterness', or 'the beloved'.
76 - this is the count with which the first name Mary has reached the top position, i.e. rank 1, of the most popular first names for girls in the USA. Admittedly, the last time was a while ago, in the year 1961, when 47,849 newborn girls were given this beautiful name. And even if it wasn't on top in the recent past, it has been given by new parents to their daughters every year since first name statistics began in 1880, putting it in the exclusive circle of only 432 first names for girls that are given at least 5 times a year in the USA. This makes Mary a classic first name and a part of the traditional American identity.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Mary was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, the first name Mary was given to newborn girls 2,097 times, ranking it at #131 and making it the year with the least amount of newborn daughters being named Mary by their parents. Even though the popularity of this name seems to be waning, a true classic can never be completely banished. So we can be confident that we will continue to see little girls named Mary for years to come.
Mary is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 3,727,747 women would currently turn around if you called out MARY really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Mary on position 1in our SmartGenius ranking of the top female names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many women named Mary, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that it’s especially popular in Mississippi? Here, Mary is the most widespread of all women’s names. A total of 87,357 women named Mary currently live in Mississippi – which is 4,54% of all female residents. No other state has as many women named Mary in relation to its population.
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 Mary 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 Mary 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 Mary, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Rocket
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Mary
Mary
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
R
Y
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
Y
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. Mary sounds like this:
