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Why would "Maria" have to have been used before Mary had a baby? Maria is a Latin form of Miriam or Mariam, and was originally a mistake by those who translated the Bible from Greek into Latin and assumed the -m was just an accusative case ending instead of being an integral part of the original Hebrew name. So Maria may well not have existed as a form of the name until the New Testament was translated into Latin, and so does not have to have existed as a name before Jesus was born.