 After a month, in , she was baptised as a Romanian Orthodox at the monastery of Cotroceni (near the site of the present-day Cotroceni Palace).In her family, the young princess was nicknamed ""Mariechen"" (a possible homage to her parents' German heritage) or ""Itty"" (derived from little).Everyone who knew Maria described her as a beautiful and precocious young child, as she was said to look at maps and identify different countries for fun at the age of only two and a half.