What's in a name? For example, Mary

Surveying the material between 330 BC and 200 AD (Josephus, NT, Rabbinic texts, Funerary inscriptions, Papyri and Ostraca from the Judaean Desert), Tal Ilan found 247 names of women, consisting of 68 different names (11 Hebrew names for 145 women, 31 Greek, 14 Aramaic, 8 Latin, 3 Persian, and 1 Nabatean).

Of the 11 Hebrew names two stood out: Marriamne (Mary, Maria) and Salome. In fact, one of every two women appears to have borne one of these names: “47.7% of the entire female population of the time bore two Hebrew names only, Salome (and its longer version, Salomezion), 61 representatives, and Mariamme (or its shorter version, Maria), 58) This is indeed an amazing figure, for it would imply that every second woman was called by one of these two names.” (p. 191)

Why? “One possible explanation is that they were typically Hasmonean: Salome after Queen Salomezion Alexandra, and Mariamme after Mariamme the Hasmonean, Herod’s beloved wife. The phenomenon corresponds with a similar tendency recorded in male statistics, where we find that the names of the five early Hasmoneans, (John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan) and the name of their father (Mattathias) were give to 625 of the men in the existing sample of 2040, i.e., 30.6%.” (p. 192)

But is that the reason?

Tal Ilan, “Notes on the Distribution of Jewish Women’s Names in Palestine in the Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods,” Journal of Jewish Studies 40, no. 2 (1989): 186–200.>