View Message

I suspect there's a language issue in the US: people with Spanish ancestry would of course prefer and use Maria. Here in South Africa, Maria is the formal name of choice for Afrikaans-speakers; its nn form is Marie, pronounced MAHri. English speakers have always used Mary and more recently also compounds like Mary-Ann, Marianne, even Mary-Lou, but not frequently, though we don't keep the right kind of statistics so it's hard to tell. We wanted to give our daughter mns to honour her grandmothers: my mother had just one given name, so that was easy; DH's Afrikaans mother was Bertha Maria. We couldn't face Bertha, and chose Mary over Maria because it fitted better with the other names.