Marion is the medieval French diminutive of Marie — from the Hebrew Miryam ("beloved, star of the sea"). Originally also masculine; in the United States the use as a feminine first name surpassed male use around 1920. A top-50 US baby name from 1907 to 1929. Marion Cotillard (born 1975) — *French actress; Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (2007) — the first French-language performance to win the Best Actress Oscar and the first French actress to win it since Simone Signoret in 1959. Three César Awards; Inception (2010), Two Days, One Night (2014, second Oscar nomination). Marion Jones (born 1975) — American track sprinter whose 5 Sydney 2000 Olympic medals were stripped after admission of doping; subject of No Excuses memoir (2010). Marion Ross — Happy Days* (1974). Maid Marion is the female lead of Robin Hood legend.
Featured throughout French cinema and American legal-sports histories.
Marion 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.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Marion reduce to 7, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.