# Hindi: Mahie



## pimouss08

Hi all,

I'm french and I think what I'm gonna ask is a bit particular.

After a trip to Mauritius we got a girl we call MAHIE

Can somebody telle me the right definition in Hindi and how it is written in this langage ?

Thanks to all in advance, hope I'll get good news from you.


----------



## desi4life

pimouss08 said:


> After a trip to Mauritius we got a girl we call MAHIE



Do you mean you adopted a girl?



> Can somebody telle me the right definition in Hindi and how it is written in this langage ?



The definition and spelling will depend on the pronunciation. Is the pronunciation_ maahii_, _mahii_, or something else?


----------



## pimouss08

No she is not adopted. We "made" her during honey moon in Mauritius 

I don't know if it is maahii or mahii, in french we don't really have this notions.

In fact I found two different way to write it :
1/ माही 
2/ मही

I also found that it is the first one which is used for name (google translation and the website माही | Mahi Name Meanings in Hindi, English Baby Names Rashi, Nakshatra, Numberology) and translate by Maahee.

So I would like that someone validate the first or second way to write it, or if it is completely another way.


----------



## desi4life

pimouss08 said:


> No she is not adopted. We "made" her during honey moon in Mauritius



Congratulations! 



> In fact I found two different way to write it :
> 1/ माही
> 2/ मही
> 
> I also found that it is the first one which is used for name (google translation and the website माही | Mahi Name Meanings in Hindi, English Baby Names Rashi, Nakshatra, Numberology) and translate by Maahee.



Baby naming websites are notoriously unreliable because they don't verify definitions with dictionaries. The definitions listed on that website are among the meanings of मही. The website erroneously lists them as meanings of माही instead.

The usual meaning of माही is "beloved, lover, paramour". Another meaning is "fish".

How did you decide on the name Mahie for your daughter? Neither मही nor माही are common as names, but it seems the latter is used more often (e.g. the actress Mahi Gill - Wikipedia).


----------



## pimouss08

desi4life said:


> How did you decide on the name Mahie for your daughter?



In fact, we are french, from Britanny and in many french regions we have dialects.
In my "dialect" my daughter name is MAÏ, pronounced MAHI, so we made it a bit more "french" and easier to pronounce so it came as MAHIE.

When we were sure of it, we found Mahi Gill, who is a beautiful indian actress so it was a good choice 

As I understand, even if it is not so common, I must take this one : माही ?


To explain more, I cannot make a mistake because it is for a tattoo


----------



## desi4life

pimouss08 said:


> In fact, we are french, from Britanny and in many french regions we have dialects.
> In my "dialect" my daughter name is MAÏ, pronounced MAHI, so we made it a bit more "french" and easier to pronounce so it came as MAHIE.



What does MAÏ mean in your dialect?



> When we were sure of it, we found Mahi Gill, who is a beautiful indian actress so it was a good choice
> 
> As I understand, even if it is not so common, I must take this one : माही ?



माही is pronounced _maahii_, and that's the Hindi spelling used in the actress' name per the link. The spelling choice is yours though. Nobody can tell you which one you "must" choose.


----------



## pimouss08

desi4life said:


> What does MAÏ mean in your dialect?



In fact it is MARIE, the Jesus mother. It is a very very common name in France.
We liked the pronounciation MAÏ and wrote it MAHIE 

Thanks for your answers


----------



## marrish

I think it is a rather specific question which desi4life has tactfully approached; as the name is NOT in Hindi, it is rather strange to ask for a meaning in this languge precisely.

MAHIE - how do you pronounce it exactly, @pimouss08 ? With an accent on the last syllable? Then the MAH part, where H is not pronounced I suspect, is not a long syllable, or is it?

Quite important to make it Hindi or to say it doesn't mean anything in Hindi. But more important for the spelling in Hindi on a tattoo!

I mean I suspect it is मई. We shall see when we have got an answer from the original poster.


----------



## pimouss08

The meaning is not the main question.

But I think that desi4life answered well as it is the same as the actress Mahi Gill. And it is the same for my daughter name, it is decomposed into two syllabes MA- and then -HIE. The only difference is that in french we do not pronounce the aspirated H BUT it is used to divide the syllabes.

In order to synthesize all of this, french langage is very flat so we lost the short and long pronunciation.
The goal of the tattoo is to represent important things to me in an Hindi meaning.
So MAHIE must be translated into an Hindi pronunciation no matter how it is really pronounce into french 

Hope you understood what I try to explained 

So if Mahi Gill is pronounced Maahii and written माही I must chose this one  And if her name signification is known I would be interested in getting it


----------



## littlepond

माही, pron. as maahii, acc. to Platts and Caturvedi both, means a fish, probably the Matysa avatar of Vishnu. It is not a word that I have ever encountered in Hindi usage, so I don't know if it carries any other meaning as well. I wonder if a girl's name would rather be मही _mahii_, or महि _mahi_, which would mean the earth, and by extension the earth goddess. मही is also a river in western India (though the Wikipedia page in Hindi seems to give the wrong orthography). All rivers, except the Brahmaputra, are feminine.

In French, the "h" is not pron. but rather serves only the same function as a trema would have, so the spelling, if written pron. wise, would be माई, which would also be the same pron. of MAÏ in French.

As for the actress Mahie Gill, I think it's only her nickname, so one cannot be sure how it is really pronounced and on what basis. Nicknames can be anything! An example: famous sportsperson Mahendra Singh Dhoni is also referred to as "mahi" affectionately by his supporters (shortening "Mahendra").


----------



## pimouss08

Thanks a lot for this complete answer 

But I must admit that I am a bit lost now to find the good word I must used :-/

As I understand, the answer is not माही as I thought BUT मही (_mahii)_, or महि (_mahi).

_
So between these two what is the real difference ?

Thanks again all


----------



## desi4life

littlepond said:


> माही, pron. as maahii, acc. to Platts and Caturvedi both, means a fish, probably the Matysa avatar of Vishnu. It is not a word that I have ever encountered in Hindi usage, so I don't know if it carries any other meaning as well. I wonder if a girl's name would rather be मही _mahii_, or महि _mahi_, which would mean the earth, and by extension the earth goddess.



I discussed this briefly in post 4. The most common meaning of माही is "beloved, lover, paramour". It's a borrowing from Punjabi and is an often used word in Hindi film songs and sometimes in literature. The "fish" meaning is rare and borrowed from Persian, so it doesn't refer to the Matsya avtaar of Vishnu. माही is relatively more common as a name than मही/महि.



> मही is also a river in western India (though the Wikipedia page in Hindi seems to give the wrong orthography). All rivers, except the Brahmaputra, are feminine.



माही is more commonly used as the river's name than मही. Hindi sabdasagara



> As for the actress Mahie Gill, I think it's only her nickname, so one cannot be sure how it is really pronounced and on what basis. Nicknames can be anything! An example: famous sportsperson Mahendra Singh Dhoni is also referred to as "mahi" affectionately by his supporters (shortening "Mahendra").



Mahi is indeed the nickname of the actress Mahi Gill. It is pronounced माही per the Wikipedia link. There is another "celebrity" example from the TV show Jamai Raja (jamaa'ii raajaa), which has a female character named माही.


----------



## desi4life

pimouss08 said:


> As I understand, the answer is not माही as I thought BUT मही (_mahii)_, or महि (_mahi).
> 
> _
> So between these two what is the real difference ?
> 
> Thanks again all



माही and मही/महि are different words, with different pronunciations and meanings. I mentioned above that माही is a relatively more common name.


----------



## pimouss08

and some  

Thanks a lot to all of you.
If you could agree each other I must be so good 

Thanks desi4life for your time


----------



## desi4life

The choice is yours. We don't know what's most important to you. Are you most interested in the pronunciation that's closest to the French, the word's meaning, or its popularity as a name in India?


----------



## pimouss08

I know that I have to choose 

The most interesting it that this word can be understood in Hindi and means something good.
I must be disapointed to write something on my skin that in fact means something bad and absolutely not pronunced "MAHI".

So first it is words pronunced MAHI in Hindi
And then a word that mean something good and if it is used as a name in India it is very nice.

As I can see माही takes a best place and as littlepond mentionned, मही/महि have their places too. Notice that for these two words I didn't understand the difference they have each other.

Words proposed by littlepond have a better signification but the one you proposed seems to be more used as a name. And all of these three are pronunced as I wanted.

To finish, महि is the one I appreciate much in its written appearance.


----------



## desi4life

pimouss08 said:


> मही/महि have their places too. Notice that for these two words I didn't understand the difference they have each other.



मही and महि overlap in meaning, but the final vowel is pronounced slightly differently. मही has a long final _ii _vowel, while महि has a short final _i _vowel.


----------



## littlepond

desi4life said:


> माही is more commonly used as the river's name than मही. Hindi sabdasagara



Both are used, but in Gujarat itself, where it is a major river and drinking water source, more people pronounce it as मही.


----------



## littlepond

pimouss08 said:


> As I can see माही takes a best place and as littlepond mentionned, मही/महि have their places too. Notice that for these two words I didn't understand the difference they have each other.



Both मही and महि are just alternative spellings of the same word, as per different pronunciation. The first one has a long -ii, close to the French i in pronunciation. The second one has a short -i, which does not exist independently in French.


----------

