Entry № 6478 · Arabic origin

Mariam Mariam — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ MAR-yam /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Arabic
Meaning
"Beloved, bitter"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Ancient (Aramaic)

A name that means "beloved, bitter".

Mariam (مريم) is the Arabic and Aramaic form of Mary — from the Hebrew Miriam. The Quran's Sura 19 is named Mariam after the mother of Jesus, who in Islam is considered the most honoured of all women.

Mariam is among the most popular girls' names across the Arab world and the Muslim diaspora. In the U.S. it is rising — currently sitting in the top 500.

Beloved, bitter — a Arabic name.

The name in its native script.

مريم · ܡܪܝܡ
Transliteration
Maryam
Pronunciation
/ ˈmæɹ.jæm /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Mariam stands.

Mariam 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.

Mariams before her.

Real people
Mariam al-Astrulabiyy
10th-century Syrian astronomer.
Late 900s CE
In fiction
Mariam
Co-heroine of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns.
2007 novel

Names connected to Mariam.

The number behind Mariam.

1

The Leader

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Mariam reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.