Madeleine
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in French: French form of Magdalene, from Hebrew Magdala, a place name
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/madlɛn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Madeleine is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Cameroon it is the 57th most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 433(measured from records)
- CMCameroon≈1 in 855
- FRFrance≈1 in 1.6K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 306 (measured from records)
- 1 in 433 (inferred from the name graph)
≈41,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
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)
French form of Magdalene, from Hebrew Magdala, a place name.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 28 languages in the etymology graph.
How Madeleine is read(measured from records)
Madeleine 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.
- French40%
French form of Magdalene, from Hebrew Magdala, a place name.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
madeleine (small gateau in the shape of a scallop shell)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Du nom biblique de Marie-Madeleine, « de Magdala »; associée à la pécheresse repentante. Fête: 22 juillet.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Du latin Magdalena, « de Magdala »; nom de Marie Madeleine, fêtée le 22 juillet.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
- English33%
French; from Magdalene, 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…
A French type of small gateau or sponge cake, often shaped like an elongated scallop shell.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish9.5%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Madeleine in Spanish.
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)
Madeleine 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #247 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 306K | Madeleine | 305 |
| US United States | — | 36,774 | 1 in 9K | 37K | Madeleine | 306 |
| CM Cameroon | #57 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 855 | — | Madeleine | 31 |
| SE Sweden | #649 | 23,556 | 1 in 433 | 24K | Madeleine | 57 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Madeleine | 19 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 145 | — | 3 |
| NO Norway | — | 2,229 | 1 in 2.5K | 8.1K | — | 28 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Madeleine de Scudéryb. 1607FRFrench writer (1607–1701)
- Madame de La Fayetteb. 1634FRnot in their usual nameFrench writer (1634-1693)
- Madeleine Albrightb. 1937USUnited States Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001
- Françoise Hardyb. 1944FRnot in their usual nameFrench singer (1944–2024)
- Isabelle Huppertb. 1953FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress (born 1953)
- Christine Lagardeb. 1956FRnot in their usual namePresident of the European Central Bank
- Madeleine Stoweb. 1958USAmerican actress (born 1958)
- Sophie Kinsellab. 1969GBnot in their usual nameBritish writer (1969–2025)
- Madeleine Westb. 1980AUAustralian actress, author and director
- Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästriklandb. 1982SEyoungest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden
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 97 sources across 52 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 306K | #135 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 37K | #1,119 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 24K | #180 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 12K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8.1K | #479 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 2.2K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 679 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2018 | 145 | — |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2018 | 80 | #88 |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 2018 | 80 | #88 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 54 | #1,119 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 2017 | 50 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- How do you pronounce Madeleine?
- A machine transcription gives /madlɛn/ (IPA) for French.
- What are other forms of the name Madeleine?
- In the etymology graph, Magdalena, Lena and Magali are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Madeleine mean, and where does it come from?
- French form of Magdalene, from Hebrew Magdala, a place name. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Madeleine a male or female name?
- Madeleine 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.
- In which country does Madeleine have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 41 thousand people named Madeleine in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled madeleine.
- Where is Madeleine most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Madeleine is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 433 people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Madeleine?
- In the United States, the national register counted 36,774 people named Madeleine in 2020, about 1 in 9.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Madeleine compared with other names?
- In France, Madeleine is the 247th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Madeleine?
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/madeleineThe 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, “Madeleine” — the 247th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.