Margene
Feminine · “pearl”
Margene is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 1,687 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Margene is Margaret cut back to its first syllable and finished with -ene, and the interesting part is the date. That ending is usually filed under the middle of the twentieth century, with Charlene, Darlene, Jolene and Marlene standing in for the whole of it. Margene was already on American registers well before that wave arrived, which means the ending was productive a full generation earlier than its reputation allows for.
How old is the name Margene?
Margene first appears in US birth records in 1912 — 113 years ago. The typical Margene alive today was born around 1941, making them about 84 years old. About 800 people named Margene are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Margene most popular?
Margene peaked in 1929, reaching #922 nationally. See the whole 1929 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Margaret, the parent name to Margene
The story of Margene
Margaret is the most heavily worked name in English. It has produced more everyday forms than any other: Madge and Marge and Margery, Greta and Rita out of the German and Italian ends of it, Margot from the French, Daisy by a translation almost nobody expects, Peggy by a rhyme. A name collects that many short forms only by being ordinary for a very long time in a great many households at once, and each new form is evidence that the name was still in daily use when it appeared. Margene is one more entry on the list, made the American way: keep the front of the big name, drop everything after it, and fasten on an ending that sounds current. The same device produced Marjean, Margie and Margarite in the same decades. The ending is what dates the result.
Meaning
pearl
The first syllable comes from Margaret, whose root is the old Greek and Latin word for a pearl; the -ene is an English name ending with no separate sense of its own. So the meaning arrives at one remove. The name means what its parent means, in the way that Marge and Peggy do, and the ending contributes sound rather than substance. That is the normal situation for names built this way and it is worth stating plainly rather than dressing up.
How the name formed
- Margaret, the parent name
- The first syllable kept and the rest dropped
- An -ene ending fastened on, ahead of the later wave
- Margene and Marjean side by side in the registers
Pronouncing Margene
mar-JEEN
Two syllables with the stress at the back, which is what this ending does to whatever it lands on, and a soft g. Marjean is the same name spelled to make that pronunciation obvious at a glance, and the two forms are interchangeable in speech.
Nicknames for Margene
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
- 1912
- Most girls named
- 195166 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #922reached in 1929
- Change vs 1972
- 0.0%5 in 1978, from 5
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.
Margenes among us
people named Margene are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Margene 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 gives a family a genuine link to Margaret without repeating a name already in use in the household.
- The back stress keeps it from sounding fussy, which the longer Margaret forms sometimes do.
- Margie and Marge are waiting for it, and both are unpretentious in a way the parent name is not always allowed to be.
- It will be heard as Marlene, Maureen or Marjorie on a first introduction more often than it is heard correctly.
- The spelling is on the register for boys as well as girls, though the name reads female to nearly everyone.
- It is firmly of its decades, and unlike Margaret it has no older layer underneath to fall back on.
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Margene
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Margenes are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Margene are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Margene in 2025?
- Margene is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Margene with classmates?
- Margene 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 Margene? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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