Mari (given name)

Mari
PronunciationMah-ree
GenderFemale
Language(s)Japanese, Latin
Origin
Word/nameJapanese
MeaningDifferent depending on the kanji
Region of originJapanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Hungarian, Estonian, Armenian
Other names
Related namesMariko
Mary

Mari is a feminine given name in the Breton, Japanese, Syriac-Aramaic language, Armenian, Estonian, Georgian, Hungarian, Finnish, Welsh, Swedish and Norwegian languages. It is also a devotional given name in Tamil. It can be seen as a cognate of Mary in Danish, Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish. In Estonian it was shortened variety of proper names like Marianne; in Estonian it is often perceived as a derivation of "mari" (berry). In the countries of Georgia and Armenia, Mari is a shortened version of the name Mariam. In Armenia, Mari (Մարի) was the 2nd-most-common female given name of 2013. In Syriac-Aramaic this is the name of a male saint.[1]

In Japanese it appears as Mari (まり, マリ), or can be written using different kanji characters so that it means, respectively:

  • 真理, "truth"
  • 万里, "long distance"
  • 茉莉, "jasmine"
  • 麻里, "hemp, village"
  • 麻莉, "hemp, white jasmine"
  • 愛莉, "love, white jasmine"(This kanji can also be read as Airi.)

The name can also be written in hiragana or katakana.

  1. ^ Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent et al., “Mari — ܡܐܪܝ ” last modified August 17, 2016, http://syriaca.org/person/1358