Maria

The Latin form of Mary, from the Hebrew Miriam — the older sister who watches baby Moses from the reeds and who later leads the Israelites in song after the crossing of the Red Sea. Maria is quite possibly the most widely used name in the Christian world, carried by Austrian empresses, by Bernstein's Puerto Rican heroine singing it on a New York fire escape, by Maria Montessori rethinking primary education in Rome. In the U.S. it has long been a steady presence thanks to Latinx and Italian American families. It currently ranks 74 and is given to about one in 520 girls. Three syllables, two thousand years.