Magdalena is the Latinate form of Magdalene, a name used in the Greek translation of the Bible. It means ‘of Magdala’, a village on the Sea of Galilee. Its name stands for ‘tower’ in Hebrew.
Magdalena is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Magdalena isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Magdalena ranks 933. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Magdalena. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Magdalena.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their daughter Magdalena annualy. This means that there have been girls named Magdalena who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus women named Magdalena have consistently been special. The name was particularly popular a long time ago in the 19th century. In one particular year, long before the first passenger flight and even before there was the first real radio, parents liked Magdalena even more than any other time: in 1882, it holds its present record of rank #301 in the list of the most popular girls' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Magdalena was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Magdalena has never been ranked higher than #301. In 2022, she rivaled the 825 names that preceded her on the list. In total, 297 girls named Magdalena were born in that year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Magdalena were born, there have been 219 newborns who received this name.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter M is a quite popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 8.5% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters A and S are more common for girls' names.
With nine letters, the name Magdalena is relatively long compared to other names. In fact, 5.6% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly nine letters. 92% of all first names are shorter, while not even 2.5% of all boys’ and girls’ names use ten or more letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long with no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 8.5% of all girls' names start with an M, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the girls’ names starting with M is Mary.
If your name is Magdalena and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Magdalena, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Goat
Dinosaur
Apple
Lion
Elephant
Nut
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Magdalena
Magdalena
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
G
D
A
L
E
N
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
M
A
G
D
A
L
E
N
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Magdalena sounds like this:
