Magdalen vs Magnus

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Magdalen Magnus

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 144 years in which either name was published, Magdalen for 106 years and Magnus for 38 years. The lead changed hands 15 times.

• 1880–1996 Magdalen ahead, apart from 5 short spells
• 1997–2025 Magnus ahead

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Magdalens alive today are over 26; half the Magnuses are over 8. That is 18 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Magdalen North Dakota (32.2×), Minnesota (7.0×), Wisconsin (5.4×)
• Magnus Washington (4.8×), Utah (3.6×), Minnesota (3.0×)

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

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• Magdalen vs Magnolia
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• Magnus vs Magnolia
• Magnus vs Magdalena