Because Ubuntu’s PostgreSQL does not seem to be usable, I decided to switch to MySQL^H^H^H^H^HMariaDB and by chance I stumbled across this article that mentioned My is actually the designer’s daughter and so is Maria.

Since I found out some time ago that Mimi is the same name as Maria and My sounds suspiciously similar to Mimi, I wondered right away if My is also a diminutive of Maria. Wikipedia mentions that Michael Widenius lives in Finland, so at first I looked for Finnish names; then I realized that Widenius is obviously a Swedish last name so I looked for Swedish names instead, and found that My is indeed a diminutive of Maria.

So I wondered: MySQL’s “My” and MariaDB’s “Maria” are, as I suspected, the same name. I wonder if they’re actually the same person. Wikipedia suggests they aren’t, but the entire “Personal life” section has been tagged as missing citations (ok, maybe I’ll agree with their citation policy this one time), so it’s still possible they are actually the same daughter.

Obviously there’s no way to know (short of asking Michael Widenius himself), but it would actually be really cool if My and Maria are actually the same person: It would be like saying “Hands off my daughter, and by the way she’s grown up now.”

Update: Joffrey Michaie has kindly pointed out My and Maria are actually different persons. Mystery solved :-)