Mari
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Zimbabwe: Karanga-speaking people; also a female name variant of Mary
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mari 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 16as Maria(measured from records)
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 16as Maria
- BRBrazil1 in 17as Maria
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 Mari 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 named Maria, 2022
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador, as Maria
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
11 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Maria in BR Brazil, AR Argentina, EC Ecuador and 1 more, 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)
Zimbabwe: Karanga-speaking people; also a female name variant of Mary
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mari 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 | 12,284,478as Maria | 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 | 1,042,139as Maria | 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)
Mari 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 Welsh, Welsh form of Mary; no dated cite given.
as a nameWelsh Surnames
In Italian, patronymic from a short form of the medieval personal name Ademaro, Adimaro, derived from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements adal ‘noble’ -F mari, meri ‘famous’. In southern Italy, it is more often from a short form of Amari, or a nickname from amaro, amaru, also maru ‘unlucky’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Italian, occupational name from mart ‘mariner’ or nickname for someone who lived by the sea.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Japanese version of the English name (Mary. See main dictionary. Maria ° Japanese version of the European name (Maria. See main dictionary, also Spanish and Italian supplements.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Italian, from the personal name Mari, a pet form of Mdrton (see Martin) or Mdrkus (see Mark), or of the female name Mdria (see Maria).
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)
- Marina Abramovićb. 1946RSnot in their usual nameSerbian performance artist (born 1946)
- Mari Natsukib. 1952JPJapanese actor and singer
- Mari Maurstadb. 1957NONorwegian actress
- Mari Kodamab. 1967FRJapanese pianist (1967−)
- Mari Kiviniemib. 1968FIFinnish politician
- Mari Asatob. 1976JPJapanese film director
- Mari Okadab. 1976JPJapanese screenwriter (born 1976)
- Christina Vidalb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer
- Mari Hoshinob. 1981JPJapanese actress
- Katie Stevensb. 1992USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 103 sources across 49 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 26K | #1,182 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 21K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 21K | #1,551 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 20K | #1,044 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 513 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 511 | #1,551 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 354 | #1,044 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 129 | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 8 | #7,369 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 6 | — |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- 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 are other forms of the name Mari?
- In the etymology graph, Maria, Mary and Marie are forms of the same name in other languages; Maarika and Mairwen are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name Mari mean, and where does it come from?
- Zimbabwe: Karanga-speaking people; also a female name variant of Mary Recorded by African Names.
- Is Mari a male or female name?
- Mari 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.
- In which country does Mari 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 is Mari most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Mari itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Ecuador's: the national register counts about 1 in 16 people named Maria.
- How common is the name Mari?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 12,284,478 people named Maria in 2022, about 1 in 17 residents.
- How common is Mari compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Mari is the most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mari?
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/mariThe 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, “Mari” — the most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.