Maggi is a pet form of Maggie or Margaret, from Greek margarites meaning pearl.
Maggi is a vivid variant spelling of Maggie, the beloved diminutive of Margaret — a name whose reach across languages and centuries is almost without parallel. Margaret descends from the Greek margaritēs (μαργαρίτης), meaning "pearl," which itself was borrowed from the Persian margārit. The pearl was among the most precious commodities in the ancient world, and the name carried that valuation across Hellenistic culture and into the Roman Empire, where Saint Margaret of Antioch — a martyr of the early church whose cult was enormously popular in medieval Europe — made it a staple of Christian naming for over a thousand years.
Maggie as a diminutive became particularly widespread in Scotland and Ireland, where it was affectionately attached to countless Margarets through the nineteenth century and eventually took flight as an independent name. Its Scottish associations gave it a warmth and earthiness — far from the formal Margaret, it suggested a woman capable and unsentimental. The literary Maggies are many and memorable: Maggie Tulliver, the passionate heroine of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss; Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; and more recently Maggie Smith, whose six-decade career gave the name a quality of acid brilliance and enduring style.
Maggi, with its double-g and final i, adds a Continental flair — echoing Italian and Scandinavian naming conventions — and happens to share its spelling with the famous Swiss condiment brand founded in 1886, giving the name an unexpected global commercial recognition. The spelling signals a name chosen with deliberate individuality, worn with a certain knowing lightness.