Magdalene
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: from Maria von Magdala; saint's name source for surnames
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mæɡdəlin/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Magdalene is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 5.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 9.8Kas Magdalena
- NLNetherlands1 in 90K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Magdalene itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Poland (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 281 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)
434,117 named Magdalena, 2026
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Magdalena in ES Spain, SE Sweden, LA Laos.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Maria von Magdala; saint's name source for surnames
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 31 languages in the etymology graph.
How Magdalene is read(measured from records)
Magdalene is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English59%
college, Cambridge Univ.
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
English form; woman from Magdala.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Swahili14%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Magdalene in Swahili.
- German13%
from Maria von Magdala; saint's name source for surnames
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Magdalene counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | — | 434,117as Magdalena | 1 in 88 | 434K | Magdalene | 3 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Magdalene | 53 |
| US United States | — | 34,074as Magdalena | 1 in 9.8K | 34K | Magdalene | 281 |
| ES Spain | — | 30,167as Magdalena | 1 in 1.7K | 32K | Magdalena | 13 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 21,626as Magdalena | 1 in 495 | 22K | — | — |
| SE Sweden | — | 21,085as Magdalena | 1 in 484 | 21K | Magdalena | 6 |
| HR Croatia | — | 6,119as Magdalena | 1 in 691 | 6.4K | — | — |
| SI Slovenia | — | 1,632as Magdalena | 1 in 1.3K | 1.6K | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 192 | 1 in 90K | 7.1K | Magdalene | 9 |
| LA Laos | #503 | — | — | — | Magdalena | 4 |
434,117 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20), 2026, counting the spelling magdalena. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); MVČR — living population register 2017; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021); SURS — resident population given names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Magdalene is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Danish, a female given name of biblical origin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Magdalene of Lippeb. 1552DECountess of Lippe by birth, and by marriage Landgravine of Hesse-Darmstadt
- Magdalena of Waldeck-Wildungenb. 1558DEnot in their usual nameCountess of Hanau-Münzenberg, later Countess of Nassau-Siegen
- Magdalene of Nagasakib. 1611JPJapanese saint
- Auguste Magdalene of Hessen-Darmstadtb. 1657DEGerman noble and poet
- Magdalene Sibylle of Saxe-Weissenfelsb. 1673DEDuchess of Saxe-Weissenfels by birth and by marriage Duchess of Saxe-Eisenach, (1673-1726)
- Marlene Dietrichb. 1901USnot in their usual nameGerman and American actress and singer (1901–1992)
- Princess Magdalena Reuss of Köstritzb. 1920DEnot in their usual nameGerman princess
- Irmgard Furchnerb. 1925DEnot in their usual namestutthof concentration camp personnel
- Ciaran Maddenb. 1947GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress
- Magdalene St. Michaelsb. 1957MTpornographic actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 54 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 5.1K | #3,877 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 192 | #3,685 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 165 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 135 | #6,978 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 53 | #2,221 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 53 | #2,221 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 40 | #15,069 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 38 | #35,064 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 24 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7 | #3,877 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 4 | #13,741 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 2 | #4,907 |
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Magdalene?
- In the etymology graph, Magdalena, Lena and Magali are forms of the same name in other languages; Malene is a recorded short or pet form.
- What does the name Magdalene mean, and where does it come from?
- from Maria von Magdala; saint's name source for surnames Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- Is Magdalene a male or female name?
- Magdalene is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How do you pronounce Magdalene?
- A machine transcription gives /mæɡdəlin/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Magdalene have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 434 thousand people named Magdalena, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Magdalene?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 192 people named Magdalene, about 1 in 90 thousand residents.
- How common is Magdalene compared with other names?
- In Laos, Magdalene is the 503rd most common given name of 27,499 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Magdalene?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/magdaleneThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Magdalene” — the 503rd most common given name in Laos. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.