Masha

In Russian, Masha (Маша) is a diminutive of Maria. It has been used as a nickname or as a pet name for women named Maria or Marie. An alternative spelling in the Latin alphabet is "Macha". In Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, "Maša" is a diminutive of "Marija" but can be a given name in its own right.

The Jewish name Masha (מַשה) is of Biblical extraction. Tradition has it that the first Masha was named after a departed male named Moshe (Moses).

Other diminutives of Maria
There are a large number of diminutives (nicknames) in Russian for Maria beside Masha:
 * Marusya (Маруся)
 * Manya (Маня)
 * Manyunya (Манюня)
 * Manyasha (Маняша)
 * Mashunya (Машуня)
 * Mashuta (Машута)
 * Mashenka (Машенька)
 * Mar'ya (Марья)
 * Mashulya (Машуля)
 * Mashka (Машка)

Notable people

 * Masha Bruskina (1924–1941), Soviet partisan of the Minsk Resistance
 * Masha Dashkina Maddux, Ukrainian dancer
 * Masha Gessen (born 1967), Russian and American journalist and author
 * Maria Kolenkina, Russian socialist revolutionary of the late 19th century
 * Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova (1950–2003), Russian conjoined twins
 * Masha Lubelsky (born 1936), Israeli politician
 * Masha Ma, Chinese fashion designer
 * Masha Rasputina (born 1964), Russian pop singer
 * Masha (singer) or Masha Shirin (born 1990 or 1991), Latvian-born American pop singer
 * Marie Yovanovitch (born 1958), American diplomat who served as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Ukraine
 * Maria "Masha Scream" Arkhipova (born 1983), lead singer of the Russian folk metal band Arkona
 * Maria Viktorovna (born 1986), Russian-American YouTuber and ASMR performer
 * Maria Vladimirovna "Masha" Alyokhina (born 1988), Russian political activist and musician.

Fictional characters

 * Masha, heroine of the Russian TV series Masha and the Bear
 * Masha, heroine of Pushkin's novel The Captain's Daughter
 * Masha, one of the title characters in The Three Sisters (play) by Anton Chekhov
 * Masha, Ilya's and Polina's daughter in The Seagull, another Chekhov play
 * Masha, in the Tokyo Mew Mew manga series
 * Masha Rostova, Elizabeth Keen's birth name in the TV series The Blacklist
 * Masha, part of Elizabeth's entourage in the film Young Frankenstein
 * Masha, obsessed fan in The King of Comedy (1983) played by Sandra Bernhard
 * Marya "Masha" Morevna, main character in Deathless, a retelling of Russian folklore
 * Maria "Masha", title character in Hayden Kopser's novella Masha (2021)
 * Masha Dmitrichenko, in the miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers, based on the novel of the same name