Madeleine
Meaning
woman from Magdala; famously borne by Princess Madeleine of Sweden
The story
Madeleine is what French speakers made of Magdalene, the woman from Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, and the name traveled from the Gospels into nearly every corner of French life; a madeleine is also the small shell-shaped cake that unlocks a flood of memory in Proust. Its best-known royal bearer today is Princess Madeleine of Sweden, younger daughter of King Carl XVI Gustaf, who has raised her children partly in the United States and kept the name drifting through the fashion pages. In American records Madeleine has never been absent: steady in the early twentieth century, dipping at midcentury, then climbing from the 1980s into its strongest run in the 2000s and the decades since. Elegant, literary, and royal at once, it wears a very long history lightly.
Madeleine around the world
One shared root links 9 names across 3 languages.
Shared root: from Magdala, the village on the Sea of Galilee (Aramaic magdala "tower"), via Mary Magdalene
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Madeleine peaked in the 2000s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
570 people · the #12,217 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 333,333 · median age 41
Among people named Madeleine living in Brazil at the 2022 census, roughly as many were born in the 1970s as in the 1980s, more than in any other decade.
The census also counted 25 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Madeleine
Most people given the name Madeleine in the United States are teenagers or young adults today.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Madeleine deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Madeleine truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Madeleine fits with your family’s names and surname.
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