Maryam (name)


Maryam or Mariam is the Aramaic form of the biblical name Miriam. It is notably the name of Mary the mother of Jesus.
The spelling in the Semitic abjads is mrym, which may be vowelized in a number of ways
Via its use in the New Testament the name has been adopted worldwide, especially in Roman Catholicism, but also in Eastern Christianity, in Protestantism, and in Islam.
In Latin Christianity, the Greek form Mariam was adopted as latinate Maria .
Forms retaining the final -m are found throughout the Middle East, in Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Urdu, and Persian, as well as the Horn of Africa, including Amharic, Tigrinya, and Somali, Turkish and in Malayalam as Mariyam in south India.

Etymology

The name may have originated from the Egyptian language; in a suggestion going back to 1897,
it is possibly derivative of the root mr "love; beloved" .
Maas references a 1906 suggestion interpreting the name as "beloved of Yahweh".
Maas further proposes possible derivation from Hebrew, either from marah "to be rebellious", or from mara "well nourished".
The name has a long tradition of scholarly etymologisation; some seventy suggestions are treated by
Otto Bardenhewer in monographic form in his Der Name Maria.
It was early etymologized as containing the Hebrew root mr "bitter", or mry "rebellious". St. Jerome, following Eusebius of Caesarea, translates the name as "drop of the sea", from Hebrew מר mar "drop" and ים yam "sea".
This translation was subsequently rendered stella maris due to scribal error, whence the Virgin Mary's title Star of the Sea.
Rashi, an 11th-century Jewish commentator on the Bible, wrote that the name was given to the sister of Moses because of the Egyptians' harsh treatment of Jews in Egypt. Rashi wrote that the Israelites lived in Egypt for two hundred ten years, including eighty-six years of cruel enslavement that began at the time Moses' elder sister was born. Therefore, the girl was called Miriam, because the Egyptians made life bitter for her people.

Modern given name

Modern given names derived from Aramaic Maryam are frequent in Christian culture, as well as, due to the Quranic tradition of Mary, extremely frequently given in Islamic cultures. There are a large number of variants and derivations.
The New Testament gives the name as both Mariam and Maria.
The Latin Vulgate uses the first declension, Maria.
Maryam is the now-usual English-language rendition of the Arabic name.
The spelling Mariyam is sometimes used as a close transcription from Hebrew, Aramaic or Arabic.
The spelling Mariam is current in transliteration from Georgian and Armenian, and in German-language transliteration from Aramaic or Arabic.
Mariam was also a current spelling in early modern English, as in the Jacobean era play The Tragedy of Mariam.

Derived names

Maryam as the name of Mary mother of Jesus is also part of given names consisting of genitive constructions in Ethiopian tradition, such as Haile Mariam "power of Mary",
Baeda Maryam "Hand of Mary", several people
Newaya Maryam "Property of Mary" or Takla Maryam "Plant of Mary", used as masculine given names. In Arabic, Marwan, meaning "one who is fragrant like myrrh", could be the masculine form of Maryam.
Ustad Ali Maryam, architect in 19th century Persia, added Maryam to his name after building a house for an important woman with that name.

People named Maryam

Notable people with the name Maryam