María

In adapting West Side Story (2021), the name Maria is changed to the name María Vasquez.

María Orosa e Ylagan (1892 – 1945) was a Philippine food technologist, pharmaceutical chemist, humanitarian and war heroine. She experimented with foods native to the Philippines, and during World War II developed Soyalac (a nutrient rich drink from soybeans) and Darak (rice cookies packed with vitamin B-1, which prevents beriberi disease), which she also helped smuggle into Japanese-run internment camps that helped save the lives of thousands of Filipinos, Americans, and other nationals. She introduced to the public the well-known banana ketchup.

María Grever (1885-1951) was the first female Mexican composer to achieve international acclaim.

María Paz Campos Trigo, better known as Paz Vega, is a Spanish actress. Vega was born in Seville to a housewife mother and a retired bullfighter father. Vega's younger sister has performed as a flamenco dancer. Vega has described her family as "traditional" and Catholic. She took her stage name from her grandmother. She decided to become an actress after attending a performance of Federico García Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba when she was 16. After completing compulsory education at 16, she was accepted at the Centro Andaluz de Teatro stage school. After two years at the stage school and two more years studying journalism, Vega moved to Madrid.

María Eulalia Allende, from a village in northern Córdoba Province, gave birth to a boy weighing 7 lb (3.2 kg) at a hospital in the city of Córdoba. Ernesto Allende, both her cousin and the alleged father, disappeared two months before the birth and was sought by police.

María José de Pablo Fernández, known professionally as Cote de Pablo, is a Chilean-American actress and singer. Born in Santiago, Chile, she moved to the United States at the age of ten, where she studied acting.

María del Rosario Mercedes Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza, professionally known simply by her stage name Charo, is a Spanish-American actress, comedian, and flamenco guitarist. Charo began playing guitar at the age of nine and trained under the famed Andrés Segovia. In 1966, she married bandleader Xavier Cugat and they moved to the United States. In the late 1960s and 1970s, she became a ubiquitous presence on American television, frequently appearing as a guest star on series like Laugh-In, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. She is known for her uninhibited and exuberant manner, perceived lack of fluency in English and thick Spanish accent, and the catch-phrase "cuchi-cuchi". She was mostly seen as a comic figure but also became a gay icon.

María Rosa Luna Henson or "Lola Rosa" was the first Filipina who made public her story as a comfort woman for the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War.

María Eugenia Cordovez Pontón served as the former First Lady of Ecuador from 1984 to 1988. She was the ex-wife of the former President of Ecuador León Febres Cordero.

María África Gracia Vidal aka The Queen of Technicolor was a Dominican motion picture actress who gained fame and popularity in the 1940s as an exotic beauty starring in a series of filmed-in-Technicolor costume adventure films. Her screen image was that of a hot-blooded Latin seductress, dressed in fanciful costumes and sparkling jewels. She became so identified with these adventure epics that she became known as "The Queen of Technicolor". Over her career, Montez appeared in 26 films, 21 of which were made in North America and five in Europe.

María Julia “Maju” Mantilla García is a Peruvian actress, dancer, model, teacher and beauty queen who won Miss World 2004 in China. Born in Trujillo, Mantilla is the younger of two daughters. She was studying to become a high school teacher and planned to start a second degree in Tourism. One of her dreams was to own an online tourism company to promote her native town and country all over the world. Her city, Trujillo, is a mixture of colonial and pre-Columbian architecture.

Maria Olafs (Born as: María Ólafsdóttir) is an Icelandic singer, musician, and actress. She represented Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 with the song "Unbroken", but failed to qualify for the final. She is known as Maria Olafs outside of Iceland. Her songs "Lítil skref" peaked the Icelandic charts at 2nd place. Her song "Unbroken" (the song she did in the Eurovision song contest) peaked the Icelandic charts at 3rd place.

María José de Pablo Fernández, better known as Coté de Pablo (born November 12, 1979), is a Chilean-American actress and plays "NCIS Federal Agent Ziva David" in the television series, NCIS. I would love to see Coté added to the namebanks here!

María Teresa Mirabal was an activist against Trujillo who was strangled to death on November 25, 1960.

A famous bearer of the name was Maria Felix, a legendary star of the Mexican cinema during the 1940's and 1950's who was known as 'La Devoradora', the 'Devourer of Men', because of the femme fatale roles she played.