Definition of "Mary"

I have a passion for the name of Mary,For once it was a magic sound to me:And still it half calls up the realm of fairyWhere I beheld what never was to be.

1821, Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto the Fifth: IV

Mary, which is as common as a white violet, and like that has something indestructibly sweet and simple, and fit for all wear, high or low, suits the cottage or the palace, the garden or the field, the pretty and the ugly, the old and the young;

1830, Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village: Cottage Names

For it was Mary; Mary / Plain as any name can be / But with propriety, society / Will say "Marie". / But it was Mary; Mary / Long before the fashions came / And there's something there that sounds so square / It's a grand old name.

1905 George M.Cohan, Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway, Mary is a Grand Old Name ( a song)

They had called their children Ann, Mary, and John as a reaction against their own fancy tricksy names. Both mothers thought these names sadly unimaginative and each blamed the child of the other for the lack of vision and style.

1996, Maeve Binchy, This Year It Will Be Different: A Christmas Treasury, Hachette UK, published 2008

Now the birth of Jeſus Chriſt was on this wiſe: When as his mother Mary was eſpouſed to Joſeph (before they came together) ſhee was found with childe of the holy Ghoſt.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Matthew 1:18, column 2

Note also that male homosexuals will call most anyone Bessie or Mary, e.g. ‘Oh, Bessie, you're a camp!’

1941, G. Legman, Sex Variants, volume II, page 1171

In America in the 1950s,... Mary was often used in the vocative to address any fellow homosexual (‘Well, Mary...’).

1985, W. Dynes, Homolexis, page 150