Talk:Mary

virgin
The "Virgin" Mary and Mary Magdalene are obviously two of the three Marys (Maries) commonly described to be present during the Crucifiction. Who's the third? A webpage say "Mary Clopas, mother of Joses and James". She doesn't seem to be one of the mentioned Marys on this page. --Menchi 14:17, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The popularity of the name Mary has plummeted, however. In 2004, it was only the 63rd most popular name given to girl babies in the United States. Maria, the name equivalent to Mary in Danish, Dutch, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish, ranked higher, being the 45th most popular name for girl babies in 2004. Jcuk

Scope of this article
Is it supposed to be all people with the name Mary who have a Wikipedia article? I'm confused. The current page doesn't make sense according to any criteria.  Enigma msg  17:11, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Priority
I moved the New testament names to the top of the listing (from the bottom), since these are the people most likely to be searched for simply using the name "Mary". In fact Mary at one time redirected to the Virgin Mary page.  Xan  dar  23:10, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: articles not moved. Armbrust The Homunculus 12:13, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

– As per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:PTM. Of all the people/places/things that are commonly called "Mary" and are not just partial title matches, obviously this Mary is the most notable, by far. She's the one that almost all other Marys (Maries? What's the plural?) are named after (not that that really means all that much), she's the second-most important human being according to a majority of people who follow the world's most popular belief system, and more ink has been spilled (wasted?) describing and debating and discussing her than just about any person who ever lived (her son being a noteworthy exception; you could probably add Mohammed to that list, and... I'm stumped for who else. Maybe Buddha.) While there are separate articles for perceptions of Mary in Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, etc. those are only branch articles off of the main article. (If only Lutherans and Presbyterians cared about her, doubtlessly their perspectives would be included in full in the article; since everybody and their mother has a perspective on her, we have to have a bunch of branched-off articles.)
 * Mary → Mary (disambiguation)
 * Mary (mother of Jesus) → Mary

To make a long story short (too late): '''When a reader types in and searches for "Mary", what is he expecting? And if an editor wikilinks to Mary, which article does she actually intend to be linking to?''' If you can answer me with a straight face that it's probably not Mary (mother of Jesus) that is the intended target, I will gladly accept your opposition. Red Slash 02:48, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Personally (since this discussion is about personal opinion), when I search for "Mary" I expect to find either a disambiguation page or an article about the name. If I search for Jane, Alice, Anne, or Laura, that's what I get; I want the same for Mary. If I want Jesus's mother, I will search for Virgin Mary ... which brings me directly to Mary (mother of Jesus). All good, so there is nothing to fix. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:28, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose Mary of Magdalene is quite prominent in contention with Mary of Nazareth. And the mother of God is usually The Virgin Mary not Mary. Further in English, Bloody Mary, Mary Queen of Scots are both very prominent as being "Mary" -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 04:01, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Mary doesn't show much mislinking. As far as searching (mother of Jesus) is helpful both using Google and using top right hand autofill In ictu oculi (talk) 08:03, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The nomination is full of assertion, and devoid of evidence; there is nothing there except the nominator's personal opinion.
 * I agree with BrownHairedGirl. When I search for a given name shared by millions of people, I reasonably expect to find a page about the name itself, listing the most prominent holders of that name. Names like Moses and Muhammad are rare exceptions in this regard. bd2412  T 13:34, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Biblical names are a really strange section of Wikipedia titles. I find David especially odd. I don't think I ever proposed an RM there for similar reasons to Red Slash's arguments here, but that doesn't mean I think David is the right title, or that Mary would be the right title for the biblical figure either. --BDD (talk) 18:05, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, BDD, for pointing out David. That example does lend some weight to Red Slash's argument.  If I were the sort of person completely driven to demand consistency, I'd open an RM to move David to David (King of Israel) and place the disambiguation page at David.  I am not that sort of person, thankfully.  However, I'm very surprised someone hasn't made that request before. Xoloz (talk) 04:58, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I don't think the mother of Jesus can be considered a primary topic. There are plenty of queens called Mary too. Just too many people. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:20, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose: too many other important people called Mary. Dab page works fine. Pam  D  15:00, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment it's a girl's name — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.175.135 (talk) 23:45, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose Though most everyone named Mary is so named in tribute to the Virgin Mary, there are simply too many different Marys to draw conclusions about which one(s) constitute primary topic(s). Xoloz (talk) 04:40, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose There's no way the mother of Jesus is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC ("more likely than all the other topics combined [emphasis added]"). The article covered under the proposed move is also arguably not even the most prominent among all the different articles about her (see the disambig note at the top of the article about her). Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:26, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 27 March 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved  (t &#183; c)  buidhe  02:00, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

– The given name is the primary topic. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:49, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Mary → Mary (disambiguation)
 * Mary (name) → Mary
 * Oppose. In the clickstream dataset there's a tie between Mary (name) and Mary, mother of Jesus (with also significant traffic for Mary (slave) and Mary (2019 film)), so there's no primary topic with respect to usage. Noting that I've reverted the recent removal of all people from the dab page: this doesn't duplicate the name article: name articles can list each and every person with the name, but anyone who's mononymously known under that name should be listed on the dab page as well (MOS:DABNAME). – Uanfala (talk) 11:14, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak Oppose per Uanfala above. Paintspot Infez (talk) 20:55, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose because the article is about the name. Bookworm857158367 (talk) 03:05, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Uanfala. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 10:03, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Far too many common uses for any to be WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Since this is clearly an area where strong religious sentiments are likely to cause disagreements on such matters it's probably extra necessary to take a WP:NPOV and not view any usage as the primary one. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 12:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Mary, mother of Jesus which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 03:01, 11 June 2022 (UTC)