Magnus
- Pronunciation
- [Mag-nus]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Great
- Origin
- Danish
About the Name Magnus
Magnus comes straight from the Latin magnus, meaning "great" — a word that was adopted as a name in Scandinavia, where it became a royal staple borne by kings of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. That regal heritage gives the name genuine grandeur, the sense of a name built to be carried with bearing and ambition, and its Latin clarity has kept the meaning fully legible across the centuries. To name a child Magnus is to set a high and ancient bar.
The name pairs that imposing meaning with a strong, two-syllable Nordic sound that feels at once ancient and strikingly modern. It has drawn parents who want something bold and distinctive without inventing anything new — a name with real history and royal precedent behind its considerable heft. Magnus reads as commanding yet handsome, weighty without being heavy, and it lands with confidence in any room.
As a boys' name, Magnus first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2013 and reached its peak in 2017 at #719. It has held steady since, standing at #749 as recently as 2024, and over its tracked span it accounted for 3,560 births among the top-1000 — a solid, sustained presence. The recorded variant Manus offers a Gaelic form of the same great name, carrying the identical meaning into a different tradition.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Magnus
US Popularity History (2013–2025)
Annual US births named Magnus by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2021 with 354 boys named Magnus (boy rank #730 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #765 for boys (337 US births). That's 35 places below its 2021 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Magnus Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Magnus the strongest states are Idaho, Washington, Connecticut.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Idaho | #380 | 25 |
| 2 | Washington | #396 | 178 |
| 3 | Connecticut | #434 | 20 |
| 4 | Oregon | #450 | 55 |
| 5 | Minnesota | #473 | 117 |
| 6 | Utah | #506 | 85 |
| 7 | Iowa | #583 | 22 |
| 8 | Wisconsin | #593 | 70 |
| 9 | Colorado | #606 | 80 |
| 10 | Kansas | #615 | 16 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #939 | 123 |
| 2 | Georgia | #936 | 27 |
| 3 | Pennsylvania | #878 | 80 |
| 4 | New York | #868 | 93 |
| 5 | Florida | #868 | 82 |
| 6 | Illinois | #852 | 62 |
| 7 | North Carolina | #835 | 60 |
| 8 | Ohio | #826 | 62 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #790 | 42 |
| 10 | Tennessee | #771 | 48 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Magnus in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manus | Surname. | Male | Irish |
Looking for names like Magnus?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Magnus to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Magnus against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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