Mary in Arabic: مريم, ماري, and Which One to Use

Mary in Arabic is مريم (Maryam), the mother of Jesus in the Quran and the Arabic Bible alike, and a common Arabic girls' name. Muslims and Arab Christians share it. For an English speaker named Mary, Arabic writes the sound: ماري (Mari), as Arabic Wikipedia does for Mary Shelley.

Copy the form you need. The Listen button reads each spelling in your device's Arabic voice, if it has one, so you can hear how مريم and ماري differ.

Mary in Arabic calligraphy, in three styles

Renders of مريم and ماري, in Amiri, Reem Kufi and Aref Ruqaa, drawn straight from the font files.

مريم or ماري: which spelling should you use?

Use مريم for the name itself. Surah 19 of the Quran, Maryam, is named after her, and Arabic Wikipedia titles its article on the mother of Jesus مريم العذراء, the Virgin Mary. Use ماري for an English speaker: all four modern Marys in the table further down are written that way.

How Arabic Wikipedia writes people called Mary

For the Virgin Mary, Arabic Wikipedia uses the Arabic form. For the four modern people called Mary in the table below, its titles write ماري four times. Our name tool gives ماري, the spelling of Mary Shelley's article.

How مريم is spelled, letter by letter

مريم has four letters, read from right to left, starting with the letter م, mīm. One letter, ر rāʾ, never joins the letter after it, so مريم always shows one small gap. Arabic writes only long vowels as letters. The two short vowels are marks that everyday spelling leaves out; مَرْيَم shows them.

What does Mary mean?

No one knows for certain what Mary means. Behind the Name lists the theories, sea of bitterness, rebelliousness, wished-for child, and thinks an Egyptian origin most likely, perhaps from mry, beloved. Mary goes back through Latin Maria and Greek Mariam to the Hebrew Miryam, the name of the sister of Moses. مريم, Maryam, is close to that Hebrew form, and Wiktionary gives Mary, Miriam and Marie as its equivalents. Mia, one of the most common girls' names in the US, began as a short form of Maria: see Mia in Arabic. Mary was one of the 500 most common names given to girls born in the US in 2024, in the Social Security Administration's 2024 national file, as copied in the usbabynames data package.

Two related names on this site are Hannah in Arabic, حنة and Elizabeth in Arabic, إليزابيث. For Arabic names to choose from, browse the Arabic girl names with their meanings, part of our Arabic vocabulary lists.

Write مريم in more fonts and download it

Paste مريم into the box below, or into our Arabic calligraphy generator, to draw it in 12 more fonts and save it as a PNG.

Frequently asked questions

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