Miriam

107,719 people in America carry this name — ranked #524 of 923.

Its American moment came before the war.

Say it MIH ree uhm

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M IH1 R IY0 AH0 M — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 107,719 2020 Census
  • Rank #524 Common
  • Per 100,000 35.7 about 1 in 3,077 people

The meaning and origin of Miriam

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “bitter”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Miriam has been given

111,851 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1924, with 1,834 of them.

80 90 00 10 20s 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Miriam

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Miriam Mary — runs together
  • Miriam Michelle — runs together
  • Miriam Martha — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Never out of use

Miriam has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Is Miriam a boy's or a girl's name?

0.2% men
107,505 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The same name elsewhere

  • Mike Dutch
  • Mija Swiss
  • Miel Bav
  • Mary English
  • Marl Bav
  • Mari Hung.|Irish
  • Mare Lith
  • Mara Lus
  • Mali Kaffir
  • Maja Swiss
  • Maga Swiss
  • Polly English
  • Molly English
  • Mieke Dutch

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 41.5%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 5.1%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 49.6%
  • Two or more races — 1.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.2%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Names built the same way as Miriam

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

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Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin