Compound of Annie (Hebrew "grace") and Mae (English month name).
Anniemae is a distinctly American compound name, combining Annie — the beloved diminutive of Anne, itself from the Hebrew *Hannah*, meaning "grace" or "favor" — with Mae, a variant of May that evokes both the spring month and a softened form of Mary. The name belongs to the same tradition of Southern double names as Marylee, Sarahjane, or Bettylou: names that were written and spoken as single units, carrying the warmth of the familiar and the formality of the given name at the same time. Annie alone has a rich cultural biography — it was the name of the sharp-shooting Annie Oakley, whose frontier self-sufficiency became an American archetype, and of the red-haired orphan in Harold Gray's long-running comic strip *Little Orphan Annie*, which debuted in 1924 and later became both a film and the enduring Broadway musical.
Mae, meanwhile, carries the irreverent glamour of Mae West, whose wit and screen presence made her one of early Hollywood's most memorable personalities. Anniemae synthesizes these two energies — the plucky, unassuming girl-next-door and the knowing, confident woman — into a single name. Most common in rural Southern and Appalachian communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Anniemae was a name given by families who valued continuity and kinship, often honoring two different female relatives in a single gesture.
It has a particular sweetness that has kept it alive at the margins of use even as naming fashions shifted. In an era when parents are rediscovering heirloom double names, Anniemae reads as authentic and unhurried.