Magnus

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: From the Scandinavian male personal name Magnus, from Latin magnus 'great'

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Magnus is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 24th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 137(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 302
  • DKDenmark1 in 320

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.

Sweden (measured from records)

74,287 people

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
225 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 137 (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MagnusLatin(measured from records)
แมกนัสThai(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)

From the Scandinavian male personal name Magnus, from Latin magnus 'great'.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.

How Magnus is read(measured from records)

Magnus is one spelling over 5 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.

  • Swedish33%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Magnus in Swedish.

  • English18%

    From the Scandinavian male personal name Magnus, from Latin magnus 'great'.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    from Latin magnus ‘great’; first attested Magnus de Weitecroft Hy 2 DC (L)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

    A male given name from Latin of mostly Scottish and Scandinavian usage.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Norwegian11%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Magnus in Norwegian.

  • German9.3%

    from Latin Magnus 'great'; also from the saint's name Magnus

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    From the Latin name Magnus; shows nominative -us and shortened/expanded patronymic forms.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

    a male given name, popular chiefly in southern Germany

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Danish6.7%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Magnus in Danish.

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)

Magnus 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.

Where Magnus is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden#2474,2871 in 13774KMagnus190
BJ Benin#8≈45,000 est.≈1 in 284—Magnus9
DK Denmark#14918,3471 in 32018KMagnus163
NO Norway#3818,0911 in 30268KMagnus139
NG Nigeria—≈13,000 est.≈1 in 16K—Magnus22
IS Iceland#1662,2441 in 1562.4KMagnus83

74,287 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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: 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); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005). 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Magnus is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Magnús, Mãgńūs, Mágnus

  • a separate given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, Sweden, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Magnús, Magnüs

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Sweden, Benin, Norway

    Also written Magnús

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Magnús

  • Polish given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Sweden, Benin, Norway

    Also written Magnús

71 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

100012001400160018002000Magnus den gode, b. 1024Magnus Barefoot, b. 1073Magnus IV of Norway, b. 1115Magnus VI of Norway, b. 1238Magnus IV of Sweden, b. 1316Magnus Hirschfeld, b. 1868Wernher von Braun, b. 1912Hans Magnus Enzensberger, b. 1929Haakon, b. 1973Magnus Carlsen, b. 1990

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 91 sources across 40 countries.

Official registers attesting Magnus
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—74K#43
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—68K#18
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202042K—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—18K#37
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202518K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navn (1880–present)2025252—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present)2024246#27
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—16#20,954
IS IcelandÞjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry)202614—

Reference works 9

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

What does the name Magnus mean, and where does it come from?
From the Scandinavian male personal name Magnus, from Latin magnus 'great'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
Is Magnus a male or female name?
Magnus is a male 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 Magnus have the most bearers?
In Sweden, the national register counted about 74 thousand people named Magnus, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled magnus.
Where is Magnus most common?
Magnus is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 137 people carrying it.
How common is the name Magnus?
In Sweden, the national register counted 74,287 people named Magnus, about 1 in 137 residents.
How common is Magnus compared with other names?
In Sweden, Magnus is the 24th most common given name of 45,482 given names recorded there.
What are other forms of the name Magnus?
In the etymology graph, Manu, Mogens and Måns are forms of the same name in other languages.

What do you want to know about Magnus?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/magnus

The 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, “Magnus” — the 24th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Magnus parses inside a full name →