Molly (name)

Molly
A statue of folk song heroine Molly Malone in Dublin, Ireland.
Pronunciation/ˈmɒli/
GenderFemale
Language(s)Irish and English
Other names
Alternative spelling
  • Mollie
  • Moli
Nickname(s)
  • Mols
  • Mol
Derived
Molly Pitcher is a heroine of the American Revolutionary War.
Titanic survivor Margaret Brown, who was later called "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."
Molly Malone was the stage name of American silent film actress Violet Isabel Malone.

Molly (also spelled Molli or Mollie) is a diminutive of the feminine name Mary that, like other English diminutives in use since the Middle Ages, substituted l for r. English surnames such as Moll, Mollett, and Mollison are derived from Molly. Molly has also been used as a diminutive of Margaret and Martha since the 1700s and as an independent name since at least 1720. The name was more popular in the United States than elsewhere in the Anglosphere in the 1800s due to usage by Irish-American families and by Jewish American families who used Molly as an English version of Hebrew names such as Miriam and Malka. Its popularity with Americans was also influenced by stories about Molly Pitcher, a heroine of the American Revolutionary War.[1]

  1. ^ Evans, Cleveland Kent (24 September 2023). "Cleveland Evans: Molly peaked with millennials". omaha.com. Omaha World Herald. Retrieved 20 January 2024.