Gloria

Besides being its meaning, Glory is a modern form of this name, too.

In Catholic countries this name was often given in honour of Our Lady of Glory - often found as Maria da Glória or Maria Gloria.

I'd like to point out that Sugar Plum Fairy's comment about the name being given in honor of "Our Lady of Glory" in Iberia is correct. Unlike many other Marian devotion names, Gloria seems to have been more common in Portugal than in Spain. "Maria da Glória" is found more than once in the Portuguese and Brazilian royal families, including as the beginning part of the official birth name of Queen Maria II of Portugal (1819-1853). The Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) published a novel titled "Gloria" in 1877, also named after its title character, a wealthy 18 year old Spanish girl from a devout Catholic family who falls in love with an English sailor named Daniel Morton, who eventually reveals he is actually Jewish, his German Jewish forebears having moved to England from Hamburg, Germany. This is of course a huge scandal in 19th century Spain. Benito Pérez Galdós's novel was published in English translations in Britain in 1879 and the United States in 1882. In Mrs. Southworth's novel, which I mentioned years ago above, the character Gloria is the daughter of the Portuguese ambassador to the United States and his wealthy American heiress wife, and she reveals in the book that her birth name was Maria da Gloria. So like Dolores and Mercedes, Gloria is a Marian devotion name first used in Iberia and transferred to English speaking countries from Spain and Portugal.

Actually G. B. Shaw's play was not the first use of Gloria as a female given name; Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, a hugely popular but now forgotten American novelist of the 19th century, published a novel titled _Gloria_ which was named after its heroine in 1891. [noted -ed]