Proper noun

1. A member of a Mesoamerican civilization that existed in and around Mexico in the 4th to 10th centuries.
2. A descendant of these people.
3. Any of the Mayan languages, such as Quiché and Yucatec.

Proper noun

1. of modern usage.
   • 1988 Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, Picasso, Creator and Destroyer, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0671454463, page 240

     When her little friends asked her what her name was, her father replied that it was Conchita - his diminutive for Maria de la Concepción. "Con-what?" they would ask again, aware, apparently, that con in French is a fool, an idiot. So her parents started calling her Maria, which from the little girl's lips soon began to sound like Maya. "Maya!" exclaimed her father. "It's perfect. It means the greatest illusion on earth." So Maya it was from then on - Maya Walter.

Proper noun

1. In Sanskrit, illusion; God’s physical and metaphysical creation (literally, "not this").
2. used in India.
   • 1993 Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, Phoenix House, ISBN 1897580207, page 891

     Eventually, Pran and Savita decided by correspondence on Maya. Its two simple syllables meant, among other things: the goddess Lakshmi, illusion, fascination, art, the goddess Durga, kindness, and the name of the mother of Buddha. It also meant: ignorance, delusion, fraud, guile, and hypocrisy; but no one who named their daughter Maya ever paid any attention to those pejorative possibilities.

     - - - 'Why ever not, Ma?' said Meenakshi.'It's a very Bengali name, a very nice name.'