Macabre
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Representing or personifying death
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country · latest register: INSEE, 1991
Macabre is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 327K(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.7M
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 90 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 327K (inferred from the name graph)
≈210 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Ce synonyme de funèbre dérive de Macchabées passé à macabré au Moyen Âge, surtout dans l’expression « danse macabré » devenue danse macabre. Voir Macchabée .
Cited for this meaning 1
- 2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Macabre is read
(measured from records)Macabre is one spelling over 2 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.
- French85%
Ce synonyme de funèbre dérive de Macchabées passé à macabré au Moyen Âge, surtout dans l’expression « danse macabré » devenue danse macabre. Voir Macchabée .
as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)
- English7.3%
Representing or personifying death.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Macabre 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 327K | 51 | Macabre | 90 |
| CH Switzerland | 5 | 1 in 1.7M | 5 | — | — |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Macabre is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Romanian, nominative/accusative feminine/neuter plural of macabru
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, feminine plural of macabro
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Nāves (dziesma, deja u. tml.)
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Evidence
(measured from records)1 register or reference work attests this spelling, across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 66 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 51 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 46 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 43 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 37 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 34 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 29 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 18 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 15 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 15 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 3 | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Macabre mean?
- In English, Representing or personifying death.
- In which country does Macabre have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 208 people named Macabre in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled macabre.
- How common is the name Macabre?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 5 people named Macabre in 2024, about 1 in 1.7 million residents.
What do you want to know about Macabre?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/macabreThe 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, “Macabre”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.