Marion

Meaning of Marion

Marion—most often voiced in English as either MARE-ee-ən or the lilting MAYR-ee-ən—springs from the mellow Provençal pet-form of the Latin Maria, itself a descendant of the Hebrew Miryām, and thus carries within it the ancient ripples of “beloved,” “bitterness,” and the Marian epithet Stella Maris, “star of the sea.” Simultaneously gentle and resolute, the name has long sailed beneath a unisex banner: it evokes the valorous Maid Marian of medieval balladry, yet also the steely charisma of actor John Wayne, born Marion Robert Morrison, proving that its syllables migrate fluidly between feminine grace and masculine fortitude. In the United States, Marion crested like a Roman galley in the 1920s—when it comfortably occupied the nation’s top fifty—and, though it has since eased into quieter waters, the Social Security records reveal a steady trickle of newborn bearers each year, a testament to its enduring, if understated, luminosity. For parents drawn to names that entwine scriptural depth with Gallic romance and historical breadth, Marion offers a venerable diadem: neither ostentatious nor obsolete, but rather a time-polished gem capable of shimmering, in saecula saeculorum, on any child who carries it forward.