Madeleine
About 45,737 American babies have been named Madeleine since 1881, most of them around 1998. In 2025 it ranked 454th. About 39,000 Madeleines are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Madeleine boys named Madeleine
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 45,737
- Estimated living today
- 39,000
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 1998
- Best rank
- 217th
- Rank in 2025
- 454th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 45,722 / 15
How old the living Madeleines are
born that year still alive today
Of the 45,737 babies given the name since 1881, about 39,000 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 17,000 of them are children and 2,700 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin French
From French Madeleine.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Madeleines
- Madeleine Albright (1937–2022)United States Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001
- Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701)French writer
- Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland (born 1982)youngest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden
- Madeleine Stowe (born 1958)American actress
- Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007)American writer
- Madeleine Carroll (1906–1987)English actress
- Madeleine of Valois (1520–1537)Scottish royal consort
- Madeleine Astor (1893–1940)American socialite and Titanic survivor
People named Madeleine with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Madeleine is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Madeleine is most concentrated in New Hampshire (3.7×), Rhode Island (2.9×), Massachusetts (2.4×), the District of Columbia (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1998
The most popular girls’ names the year Madeleine peaked:
Madeleine elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Madeleine | 306,905 | 3rd |
| England and Wales girls | Madeleine | 13,024 | 64th |
| Norway girls | Madeleine | 2,238 | 78th |
| Sweden girls | Madeleine | 1,324 | 43rd |
| New Zealand girls | Madeleine | 780 | 73rd |
| Belgium girls | Madeleine | 743 | 250th |
| Scotland girls | Madeleine | 715 | 135th |
| Ireland girls | Madeleine | 246 | 359th |
| Switzerland girls | Madeleine | 222 | 406th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Madeleine | 80 | 202nd |
| Poland girls | Madeleine | 33 birth registrations | 405th |
| France boys | Madeleine | 25 | 1,629th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Madeleine: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Madeleine | 117 | 0.009% | 363rd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Madeleine | 101 | 0.023% | 177th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Madeleine | 4 | 0.006% | 184th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Madeleine is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.04% of children were given it – 43 of them.
Madeleine: rank by region
In 2025, Madeleine was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Madeleine | 318 | 17 |
| Wallonia | Madeleine | 365 | 7 |
| Brussels | Madeleine | 132 | 8 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Madeleine appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (132nd), Province of West Flanders (138th) and Province of East Flanders (214th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Madeleine by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 4 | 552nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Madeleine among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Madeleine | 1,837 | 4,033 |
| Finland girls | Madeleine | 406 | 1,288 |
| the Netherlands boys | Madeleine | — | 80 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Madeleine lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 502 women called Madeleine were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Madeleine | 35 | 0.063 | 1,286 |
| Tarragona | Madeleine | 22 | 0.050 | 1,304 |
| Balears, Illes | Madeleine | 30 | 0.048 | 1,328 |
| Palmas, Las | Madeleine | 28 | 0.047 | 1,779 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Madeleine | 32 | 0.031 | 1,830 |
| Rioja, La | Madeleine | 5 | 0.030 | 1,693 |
Listed in 26 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 26 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Madeleine against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.