Mary (Aramaic: Maryam, later Hebrew Miriam), called since medieval times Madonna, was a Jewish resident of Nazareth in Galilee and known from the New Testament as the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament describes her as a young maiden – traditionally, Greek parthénos signifies an actual virgin – who conceived by the agency of the Holy Spirit while she was already the betrothed wife of Saint Joseph and was awaiting their imminent formal home-taking ceremony (i.e., the concluding Jewish wedding rite).
The name "Mary" comes from the Greek ?????, which is a shortened form of ??????. This is a transliteration of the Hebrew/Aramaic name Maryam. In later Hebrew the vowel "a" changed (regularly) to "i" in a closed unaccented syllable, so that by the time the Jews began to use vowel points, they wrote it as Miryam.
Mary's most common titles include The Blessed Virgin Mary (also abbreviated to "BVM"), Our Lady (Notre Dame, Nuestra Señora, Nossa Senhora, Madonna), Mother of God, and the Queen of Heaven (Regina Caeli) (see Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary).
Mary is referred to by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Anglican Church, and all Eastern Catholic Churches as Theotokos, a title recognized at the Third Ecumenical Council (held at Ephesus to address the teachings of Nestorius, in 431). Theotokos (and its Latin equivalents, "Deipara" and "Dei genetrix") literally means "Godbearer". The equivalent phrase "Mater Dei" (Mother of God) is more common in Latin and so also in the other languages used in the Western Catholic Church, but this same phrase in Greek, in the abbreviated form of the first and last letter of the two words (?? ??), is the indication attached to her image in Byzantine icons. The Council stated that the Church Fathers "did not hesitate to speak of the holy Virgin as the Mother of God", so as to emphasize that Mary's child, Jesus Christ, is in fact God.
The title, Queen Mother, was given to Mary in early Christianity, since Mary was the mother of Jesus, who was sometimes referred to as the "King of Kings" due to His lineage of King David. The Biblical basis for this understanding is found in 1 Kings 2:19-20, where King Solomon made his mother, Bathsheba, his queen mother present in his royal court, and honored all of her requests and requests from those who petitioned her. This governmental practice is also found throughout 1 and 2 Kings and in Jeremiah 13:18-19. In ancient Middle Eastern cultures, it was common for a king to have more than one wife; however, the king only had one mother and was an integral part of each royal court.
Mary is also sometimes referred to as the New Eve, as her obedience to God's command (contrasted with Eve's disobedience) led, according to this system of belief, to the salvation of mankind through Jesus.
