Miriam is another spelling of the Hebrew name Miryam of uncertain meaning. It could stand for ‘sea of bitterness’, ‘rebelliousness’, and ‘wished for child’.
Miriam is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Miriam 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, Miriam ranks 263. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 7 were named Miriam. In the entire USA, approximately 105,048 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Miriam. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their daughter Miriam annualy. This means that there have been girls named Miriam who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus women named Miriam have consistently been special. A small flight of popularity was experienced by the name way back in the last century and in one particular year, parents liked Miriam even more than any other time: in 1917, it holds its present record of #132 in the ranking of the most popular girls' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Miriam was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Miriam has never been ranked higher than #132. In 2022, she rivaled the 248 names that preceded her on the list. In total, 1,182 girls named Miriam were born in that year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Miriam were born, there have been 1,057 newborns who received this name.
The name Miriam may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Miriam is apparently especially popular in New York. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 497 women in New York is called Miriam. In total, that’s 24,019 women who feel addressed when the name Miriam is shouted loudly across New York and who ensure that their name makes it to #119 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Miriam as the answer a total of 105,032 times. This places Miriam at #319 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Miriam as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
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 Miriam 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 Miriam 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 Miriam, you can simply say:
Mouse
Igloo
Rocket
Igloo
Apple
Mouse
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Miriam
Miriam
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
I
R
I
A
M
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
I
R
I
A
M
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. Miriam sounds like this:
