Marlene
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Marlene is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Nicaragua it is the 54th most common given name. In English, recorded as German; old French. Meaning unclear in OCR; related to Marlee.
- NINicaragua≈1 in 573(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 792
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 1K
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 Marlene 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 358 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 573 (inferred from the name graph)
≈580,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nicaragua, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
German; old French. Meaning unclear in OCR; related to Marlee.
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Marlene is read(measured from records)
Marlene 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.
- English43%
German; old French. Meaning unclear in OCR; related to Marlee.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
A female given name from Hebrew borrowed from German in early 20th century.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Modern form, often from Mary Magdalene.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Spanish23%
contracción alemana de Marie y Helene
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- Portuguese19%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Marlene in Portuguese.
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)
Marlene 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈580,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Marlene | 13 |
| BR Brazil | #130 | 267,461 | 1 in 792 | 302K | Marlene | 163 |
| US United States | — | 106,957 | 1 in 3.1K | 107K | Marlene | 358 |
| PL Poland | — | 48,612as Marlena | 1 in 788 | 49K | — | 3 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Marlene | 64 |
| NI Nicaragua | #54 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 573 | — | Marlene | 34 |
| SV El Salvador | #135 | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Marlene | 38 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 5,348 | 1 in 953 | 5.3K | — | 44 |
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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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)
Marlene is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Marlene (m.fl. former) är ett tyskt namn, en sammanslagning av → Marie och → Magda lena. En känd namnbärare är filmstjärnan Marlene Dietrich (1901–92), från början Maria Magdalena. I den rikssvenska almanackan 4 april och i den finlandssvenska 15 augusti.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Contraction de Marie et Madeleine; origine mixte hébraïque/araméenne.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
- Marlene Dietrichb. 1901USGerman and American actress and singer (1901–1992)
- Mitzi Gaynorb. 1931USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1931–2024)
- Marlene Schmidtb. 1937DEGerman actress
- Marlene Willoughbyb. 1948USAmerican pornographic actress
- Marlene Dumasb. 1953ZASouth African painter and draftsperson (born 1953)
- Marlene Forteb. 1961CUCuban actress
- I. Marlene Kingb. 1962USAmerican writer, producer and director
- Kelly Madisonb. 1967USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress, director and producer
- Marlene Favelab. 1976MXMexican model and actress
- Marlene Weingärtnerb. 1980DEGerman tennis player
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 94 sources across 53 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 302K | #167 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 267K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 266K | #117 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 107K | #529 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 5.3K | #135 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #117 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 177 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 136 | #529 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 136 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 103 | #1,535 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 103 | #1,535 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1994 | 7 | — |
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 does the name Marlene mean, and where does it come from?
- German; old French. Meaning unclear in OCR; related to Marlee. Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- In which country does Marlene have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 581 thousand people named Marlene in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled marlene.
- What are other forms of the name Marlene?
- In the etymology graph, Maria, Magdalena and Marla are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Marlene a male or female name?
- Marlene 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 common is the name Marlene?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 267,461 people named Marlene in 2022, about 1 in 792 residents.
- How common is Marlene compared with other names?
- In Nicaragua, Marlene is the 54th most common given name of 16,569 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Marlene?
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/marleneThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Marlene” — the 54th most common given name in Nicaragua. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.