Mae has three convergent origins. It is a short form of Mary (Hebrew "beloved"), of Margaret (Greek "pearl"), and a variant spelling of May — the month named for the Roman goddess Maia, goddess of growth and spring.
Mae was hugely popular in the early 20th century, faded for decades, and has returned dramatically in the 2010s. Today it sits in the U.S. top 250 and is climbing. Two letters, multiple meanings, perfect minimalism.
Mae 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.
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In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Mae reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.