Mafalda
Feminine · “Mighty in battle”
Mafalda is what Portuguese and Italian did to Matilda, and it is a name with two very different modern owners: an Italian princess who died in a German camp, and a small girl in an Argentine comic strip who has been arguing with the world for sixty years.
How old is the name Mafalda?
Mafalda first appears in US birth records in 1902 — 123 years ago. The typical Mafalda alive today was born around 1922, making them about 103 years old. Fewer than a hundred people named Mafalda are estimated to be alive in the US today — a true one-of-a-kind name.
When was the name Mafalda most popular?
Mafalda peaked in 1915, reaching #756 nationally. See the whole 1915 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Mahthildis to Mafalda
The story of Mafalda
Princess Mafalda of Savoy was a daughter of the king of Italy who married a German prince and lived in Germany. When Italy changed sides in the war she was arrested at the Vatican's own gate by the Gestapo, sent to Buchenwald, and housed in a hut near a munitions factory that Allied aircraft bombed; she was injured, operated on badly, and died. Her family did not learn what had happened for months. In an entirely different register, the name belongs to a comic strip drawn in Buenos Aires from the mid-nineteen-sixties, whose heroine is a six-year-old who hates soup, worries about the United Nations and asks her parents questions they cannot answer. It ran for less than a decade and is still read across the Spanish-speaking world.
Meaning
Mighty in battle
The Germanic elements are maht, might or strength, and hild, battle, and the compound was one of the standard aristocratic women's names of early medieval Europe. Iberian and Italian speech reshaped it: the consonant cluster in the middle simplified, the vowels moved, and what came out was Mafalda, which does not look like the same name and is.
How the name formed
- Mahthildis
- Matilda
- Mafalda
Related forms: Mafalda · Mafalda · Matilda · Mechthild · Mahaut
Pronouncing Mafalda
mah-FAL-dah
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. Portuguese reduces the final vowel almost to nothing; Italian keeps it full. English speakers reading it cold usually get it right, which is unusual for a name of this shape.
Nicknames for Mafalda
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1902
- Most girls named
- 192585 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #756reached in 1915
- Change vs 1936
- +16.7%14 in 1937, from 12
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Mafalda in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mafalda in Portuguese — same name
- Mafalda in Italian — same name
- Matilda in English — related form
- Mechthild in German — related form
- Mahaut in French — related form
Mafaldas among us
Fewer than a hundred people named Mafalda are estimated to be alive in the US today — a true one-of-a-kind name.
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Mafalda sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is at home in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, and readable at sight in English.
- The name is genuinely old and genuinely aristocratic without being heavy in use.
- Nothing about the spelling is ambiguous once the name has been seen.
- English speakers will not connect it to Matilda without being told, so the family history has to be explained.
- It is uncommon in the United States and will be misheard as Malfalda and Marfalda.
- In Spanish-speaking countries the comic strip is the first association and is very strong.
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Mafalda
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Mafaldas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. Fewer than a hundred people named Mafalda are estimated to be alive in the US today — a true one-of-a-kind name.
- How popular is the name Mafalda in 2025?
- Mafalda is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Mafalda with classmates?
- Mafalda will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Mary#125 · Margaret#112 · Michelle#465 · Melissa#419 · Maria#87 · Martha#712 · Marie#617 · Mildred#1962
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mafalda? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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