Maria
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Latin Maria, biblical name of Hebrew origin, traditionally linked to Miriam
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/maria/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Maria is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the most common given name.
- ECEcuador1 in 16(measured from records)
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 16
- BRBrazil1 in 17
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Maria itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #1 (measured from records)
- 11 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 679 (measured from records)
- 1 in 16 (inferred from the name graph)
12,284,478 people, 2022
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
12 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Mary in US United States, PH Philippines, CZ Czechia and Мария in RU Russia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Latin Maria, biblical name of Hebrew origin, traditionally linked to Miriam
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Maria counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #1 | 12,284,478 | 1 in 17 | 12M | Maria | 306 |
| AR Argentina | #1 | ≈2,300,000 est. | ≈1 in 20 | 5.3K | Maria | 253 |
| RU Russia | #19 | ≈2,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 72 | #4 | Мария | 263 |
| US United States | #1 | 1,768,343as Mary | 1 in 188 | 1.8M | Mary | 679 |
| PH Philippines | #1 | ≈1,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 92 | 27K | Mary | 225 |
| EC Ecuador | #1 | 1,042,139 | 1 in 16 | 1M | Maria | 165 |
| CZ Czechia | #22 | 521,052as Marie | 1 in 21 | 521K | Mary | 130 |
| SV El Salvador | #2 | ≈410,000 est. | ≈1 in 16 | 627 | Maria | 110 |
12,284,478 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; INEC — civil registry names; This page discusses the popularity of names in Sonsonate, El Salvador, and Puno, Peru in the 1980s, published by Maybe i; MVČR — living population register 2017. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Maria is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Vietnamese, Vietnamese form of Mary; title used for the Virgin Mary in Catholic usage.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In English, Hebrew; bitter; wanted child; also the star of the sea
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In German, from Hebrew Miryam; source of Miez(e), Miesekatze
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Irish, Latin form of Mary; sometimes used in Ireland.
as a nameIrish first names
from the female personal name, Latin Maria, which arose as a back-formation from the early Christian female name Mariam. This was mistaken for an accusative case, with the usual Latin feminine accusative ending -am, but in fact it is an Aramaic form of the Hebrew name Miryam (see Marie).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Maria Theresa of Austriab. 1717ATruler of the Habsburg Dominions (1717-1780)
- Leopold II of Belgiumb. 1835BEnot in their usual nameKing of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909 (1835–1909)
- Vittorio Emanuele IIIb. 1869ITnot in their usual nameKing of Italy from 1900 to 1946
- Maria Montessorib. 1870ITItalian physician and educator (1870-1952)
- Franz von Papenb. 1879DEnot in their usual nameGerman general staff officer, politician, diplomat, nobleman and Chancellor of Germany (1879–1969)
- Corazon Aquinob. 1933PHnot in their usual namePresident of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992
- Sonia Sotomayorb. 1954USnot in their usual nameUS Supreme Court justice since 2009
- Halle Berryb. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1966)
- Steffi Grafb. 1969DEnot in their usual nameGerman tennis player
- Maria Sharapovab. 1987RURussian tennis player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 203 sources across 101 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 12M | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 12M | #1 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 12M | #5 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes no Brasil API (Census 2010 + 2022) | — | 12M | #1 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6M | #8 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 1M | #1 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 571K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 60K | #1 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 4.6K | #268 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.9K | #8 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 669 | #839 |
Reference works 11
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Justi, Ferdinand, Iranisches Namenbuch (1895)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Maria mean, and where does it come from?
- from Latin Maria, biblical name of Hebrew origin, traditionally linked to Miriam Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What are other forms of the name Maria?
- In the etymology graph, Mary, Marie and Marilyn are forms of the same name in other languages; My, Marita and Maja are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Maria have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 12 million people named Maria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled maria.
- Where is Maria most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Maria is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 16 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
- Is Maria a male or female name?
- Maria is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How do you pronounce Maria?
- A machine transcription gives /maria/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- How common is the name Maria?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 12,284,478 people named Maria in 2022, about 1 in 17 residents.
- How common is Maria compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Maria is the most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Maria?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mariaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Maria” — the most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.