One Christmas some years ago, during a visit to Virginia, I sat drinking wine with five women I had grown up with. I hadn’t had as much of the libation as the rest of them, but I was always a cheap date, and I was feeling blurty.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Raise your hand if you have a sister named Mary!” Four of us, including me, immediately did so. Number Five was named Mary, and after I had expanded my data set to include first cousins named Mary, Number Six was also able to meet my criteria. My own sister Mary was named after our mother, and thus was called Mary Millicent. My mother went by Millie, while Mary, to this day, goes by Mary. Apparently, way back in my mother’s ancestry is a lady riverboat captain named Mary Millicent Miller. (Obligatory digression: in those days, when women were less likely to do stuff, you had to prefix “lady” to anything that traditionally belonged to the male purview, which was most things.)

Of course, this name is the apex predator of biblical names, so it is no surprise that it has been so widely used. One time my sister Mary was lamenting the ordinariness of her name, noting that in our neighborhood, all the Marys had to be identified by first and last (or first and middle) names. My father tipped his hat gallantly and said that her name was “as common as violets, and just as sweet.” Mary, as a teenager, might have rolled her eyes, but I bet she was pleased. Mair?

I have in recent years been impressed to see females younger than I named Evelyn; the same applies to young girls named Mary (and Laura; note the correct spelling used here). I would have to say that sometimes trying to come up with something new is just a good way to make a fool of yourself (ripped jeans coming right off the rack in a high-end clothing store comes to mind, although I imagine those folks are blushing all the way to the bank). A really good name like Mary won’t wear out (as opposed to, say, Hortense, which is hopefully, mercifully, extinct). We don’t need to fancy it up, either; the traditional spelling has always worked, and still does work, just fine.