Entry № 6582 · Arabic origin

Maryam Maryam — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ MAR-yam /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Arabic
Meaning
"Beloved, bitter, sea of sorrow"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Ancient

A name that means "beloved, bitter, sea of sorrow".

Maryam is the Arabic and Aramaic form of Mary, mother of Jesus. The Quran contains an entire surah — chapter 19, Sūrat Maryam — devoted to her, and she is the only woman named explicitly in the entire Quran. In Islam, Maryam is one of the most honoured women in history.

The original Hebrew form, Miriam, was the name of Moses's sister. The ambiguity has not slowed its use — over the past two thousand years Maryam, in its various forms (Mary, Maria, Marie, Mariam, Miriam, Maryam), has been one of the most common female names in the world.

Within the Arab world, Maryam is among the most popular girl names.

Beloved, bitter, sea of sorrow — a Arabic name.

The name in its native script.

مريم
Transliteration
Maryam
Pronunciation
/ ˈmaɾ.jam /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Maryam stands.

Maryam does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Maryams before her.

Real people
Maryam Mirzakhani
Iranian mathematician. First and only woman to win the Fields Medal (2014).
1977 – 2017
Maryam Monsef
Afghan-Canadian politician.
born 1984
In fiction
Maryam (Mary)
Mother of Jesus. Central figure in both the New Testament and the Quran.
Quran, Sura 19

Names connected to Maryam.

The number behind Maryam.

8

The Visionary

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Maryam reduce to 8, The Visionary. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.