The Baby Name Wizard

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Contribute to, or edit, this collection of community wisdom on the name Miriam!

Comments and insights on the name Miriam: | Edit

This is my 2 year old niece's name. We call her Miri.

Miriam is my given name...as a young child I didn't have any Miriam-related nicknames, just the cutsie names your family calls you that don't count....but once I was in middle school my friends turned it into Miriyum, yum, yum yum, yummy and I had a friend that called me Mimi for a semester. None of those stuck - thankfully. Now at 32 - just Miriam. I wish I had known about Miri though. I like it :) is it too late for a nickname to catch on? ;)

Personal experiences with the name Miriam: | Edit

Very interesting that some of the Miriam meanings have actually referred to other Hebrew females in a similar way...Mara means "bitter", although that was Naomi's sarcastic joke when referring to the enormous loss of her husband and three sons as well as the possibility of starving to death. "Sea of Sorrow" is similar to Rachael's original choice of the name Ben-oni (son of my sorrow), who Jacob renamed Benjamin (right hand man)after she passed away, doing away with the negative energy altogether and keeping it close enough to make it a joint decision. Hebrew names always interested me as I have two (Deborah Elizabeth) myself.

"What's in a name?" - Shakespeare's young Romeo may have waxed philosophical on how little her name mattered to him because he loved her, but I feel that even though we did not choose them ourselves they usually say a whole LOT about the person who wears them. And to think I might have been Sarah had my Aunt not named my cousin a few months before I was born.

Nicknames for Miriam: | Edit

Mira, Mimi, Miri, Mim

Meanings and history of the name Miriam: | Edit

My name is Miriam and I have always heard "sea of bitterness"....ugh! I hated that. But then I heard "songbird" because apparently, before Miriam let Moses float away in the Nile, she sang to her little baby brother to comfort him. I like thay way better!!

Famous real-life people named Miriam: | Edit

Miriam, the sister of Moses
Miriam (born c. 1981), Mexican transwoman who starred in There's Something About Miriam
Miriam Flynn (born 1952), American voice artist and character actress
Miriam Gallardo (born 1968), Peruvian volleyball player
Miriam Gonzalez (born 1977), Playboy playmate
Miriam Leslie (1828-1914), American author, publisher, woman suffrage advocate, and philanthropist
Miriam McDonald (born 1987) Canadian actress, and a star of Degrassi: The Next Generation
Miriam Makeba (born 1932), South African singer and activist
Miriam Margolyes (born 1941), a British actress
Miriam Ramón (born 1973), Ecuadorian racewalker
Miriam Shaviv (born 1976), literary editor of the Jerusalem Post
Miriam Stockley (born 1962), English South African-born singer
Miriam Stoppard (born 1937), British physician, author, television presenter, and agony aunt
Miriam Toews (born 1964), Canadian author
Miriam Yeung (born 1974), Hong Kong singer-actress
Miriam Defensor Santiago (born 1945),Senator in the Philippines

Miriam in song, story & screen: | Edit

Miriam ben Mordecai in The Roman Mysteries
Miriam Blaylock in 1983 movie The Hunger
Miriam Leveirs in D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers
Miriam, the kleptomaniac mother in Bee Season
Miriam "Miri" Linky, one of the title characters of Kevin Smith's film "Zack & Miri Make a Porno"