At 1:55:18 AM on Saturday, September 29, 2007, Rick
McCallister wrote:
[...]
> NOW, my crackpot idea.
> The name Miriam, Maryam, Mary, Marie, etc. is
> traditionally linked to Hebrew mar yam "bitter sea". This
> does not sound at all like a name you'd want to give your
> daughter.
Keeps the boggarts at bay. But in fact I've never seen it
offered seriously.
> I'm guessing it more likely comes from Egyptian mery
> "beloved" + some suffix or other word. Any ideas?
The idea has been proposed. Emidio Dei Felice, Dizionario
dei nomi italiani, s.n. <Maria>, referring to Hebrew
<Marya:m>:
[I]l nome ... è di origine egizia, è cioè un derivato
dell'egizio _mrj(t)_ 'amato, caro' con il suffisso
diminutivo femminile ebraico _-a:m_.
In a couple other secondary sources I've seen other
suggestions: it's from a Hebrew <ra:ma> 'high, longed for,
desired' with a prefix <ma-> that the writer didn't
identify, or perhaps related to <meri:> 'rebellion'; or
(without any details) it may originally have signified 'den
tjukkfalne', which I take to be 'the stoutish, the
heavyset'. De Felice is unusual in not acknowledging that
the origin is uncertain.
Brian