Miriam?

Love it. Would love to use it, but it's too similar to my own name!

I love it and think it feels current .

It's beautiful. It's my dds middle name and she loves it too.

Lovely ancient name. Was top of my list if I'd had a daughter.

Yeah this. Miriam is not a name I would give a new baby daughter to be honest.

You sound kind of hateful yourself with that description.

apart from the people named Miriam/Myriam/Mirjam (…) that I know personally:

my primary association is the prophetess, tbh.
and after that was also Miriam Durantez.

Miriam Margolyes definitely wouldn’t be my first (or third) thought… it’s a perfectly useable and lovely name imo.

I'm Irish and definitely think of Marian as being a religious name. Very Catholic associations with marian shrines and marian years, and other things Virgin Mary related.

I think it sounds both prim and drab.

Beautuful. As is Marian.

Nice name. I think of Miriam Gonzalez first, not Margolyes.

Several people on this thread have explained that spellings of names are not consistent throughout Muslim countries. In Egypt it is generally Maryam. But there are Muslim majority places where the name Miriam, with that spelling, has been in use for hundreds of years.

yes my grandmother was a christian religious mother and was her name

i love it, was my grandmothers middle name.

In the Old Testament Miriam was Moses older sister and a prophetess. A very pretty name OP.

NO!

I LOVE it! It was going to be DD’s name but we chose a different one. It’s a beautiful name.

I love it

@kitsuneghost , that's your view, but many think differently. I don't think it is a good idea because the names might be

• a bit dated in the original culture
• too different
• result in prejudice
• misspelt or mispronounced regularly

and it would probably get tedious to be asked 'Are you scottish/american/welsh/german/italian/hindu/russian/christian/jewish/whatever?' a lot.

The names sound usually better in their original language.

It's not as if there aren't lots of names to choose from without borrowing.

The Marvellous Mrs Maisal is a Miriam, nickname Midge!

I love that tv programme and I love the name - classic, pretty and underused

Marian is a beautiful name, I've always loved it. It will stand the test of time and I doubt there will be six other kids in her class with the same name - unlike Darcey or whatever the latest trend is. It is an older version of the name Mary and in Arabic and Farsi is it known as Mariam. I really don't think any religious connotations would be attached to someone with the name Marian.

I have a Miriam. We are practicing Christians and this was a factor in choosing the name. We had Madeleine on our list as a "less Christian" option but Miriam is so pretty we went with it. Love the name and we use Em or Miri as nicknames.

It's quite unusual, we have only met a handful of others from a range of ages. And of course a few Maryams.

What is the mumsnet obsession with only using a name if you have heritage?
If you like it use it

The re are many non-Irish with Irish names
There are many non-Scottish with Scottish names
Many non-religious people give their kids biblical names
Many names you think as western originate from other areas

A name is just a name
It really doesn't matter where it comes from as long as you like it

KristenBlest,
Alright, I’m genuinely interested. How can you tell whether a name is Jewish or Christian or Muslim? Are you going by how they are written in the different holy books? Or some other method? Because my understanding is that in the oldest copies of the different holy scriptures there just aren’t any vowels used. So the name that is Mary in English was written as something like Mrm or Mrjm (but not with Roman letters obviously). And then the Christians went in for translations of the bible - into Latin and then much later English and every other language Christian leaders thought would be useful. So we get Mary and Marie and Maria written in different translations of the Bible. But with the Koran+Muslim holy texts and I believe with the Torah+Jewish holy texts there has been an emphasis on keeping the original text exactly the same over the centuries. So this name is still written something like ´Mrm’ or ´Mrjm’ in Hebrew and Arabic. If that’s the case then to me Miriam and Myriam or Maryam just look like different spellings or different transliterations of the same thing - because only the vowels are different. I think the Arabic speakers I know would pronounce them all the same too (Algerian Arabic speakers mostly). I do appreciate this could vary a lot depending a language though.
It’s more like the difference between ´Susanne’ and ´Suzanne’ as far as I can tell.
Maybe I have missed something important about naming traditions and religions though?