Margaret
Meaning of Margaret
Margaret drifts onto the tongue like moonlight on lacquered water—rolls of “MAR” and “gret” echoing softly whether spoken in English, German, or French—yet beneath that calm surface glimmers an older tale, beginning with the Greek margarítēs, “pearl,” the same word that, in Japanese, becomes shinju and adorns classical verse as a symbol of quiet resilience. She has traveled far: carried by medieval saints who braved dragons, by stoic Scottish queens who steadied kingdoms, and by twentieth-century American birth charts that rose like a spring tide in the 1930s before receding to today’s measured but steady flow—still a few thousand newborns each year, proof that elegance ages better than fashion. The name’s aura is cool and lustrous, reminiscent of a single white daisy (called a “māgaretto” bloom in Tokyo florists) set in a bamboo vase—unassuming yet impossible to overlook. And while some modern ears may also hear the distant clink of a salted-rim cocktail, Margaret herself remains sober, content to sparkle with dry wit, polished composure, and the quiet promise that even in restless eras, a well-cut gem will not lose its shine.
Pronunciation
German
- Pronunced as MAHR-gah-ret (/ˈmaʀ.ɡa.ʁɛt/)
French
- Pronunced as mar-GA-reh (/maʁ.ɡa.ʁɛt/)
English
- Pronunced as MAR-guh-ret (/ˈmɑr.gət/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
States Popularity Chart
Notable People Named Margaret
| Margaret Thatcher was the British prime minister from 1979 to 1990, the first woman to hold the office and the longest serving of the 20th century, whose policies known as Thatcherism and firm leadership earned her the nickname the Iron Lady. |
| Margaret Atwood is a celebrated Canadian novelist and poet best known for The Handmaid's Tale, with a prolific body of work, major literary awards, and many film and TV adaptations. |
| Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne - Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne, was an English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer, and playwright who published more than a dozen works under her own name when most women were excluded from publishing. |
| Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, author, and speaker who was a frequent media presence in the 1960s and 1970s. |
| Margaret Court is an Australian former world number one tennis player and Christian minister who holds the most titles in tennis history, with 24 women’s singles majors and 64 major titles overall. |
| Margaret Hamilton is an American computer scientist who led development of the Apollo Guidance Computer flight software at the MIT Instrumentation Lab and later founded the Cambridge firms Higher Order Software and Hamilton Technologies. |
| Margaret Chase Smith was a trailblazing Maine Republican, the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House and Senate, famed for her 1950 Declaration of Conscience denouncing McCarthy. |
| Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy - Margaret of Austria, born an Archduchess, governed the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530 as the first of many female regents there, and also held the titles Princess of Asturias and Duchess of Savoy. |
| Margaret Bourke-White was a pioneering American photojournalist known for industrial images who became the first foreign photographer to document the Soviet Union and shot the first cover of Life magazine. |
| Margaret Trudeau is a Canadian activist and mental health advocate who was married to prime minister Pierre Trudeau and is the mother of prime minister Justin Trudeau, making her the first woman to be both the wife and the mother of Canadian prime ministers. |
| Margaret Battin - Margaret Pabst Peggy Battin is an American philosopher and medical ethicist at the University of Utah, a Hastings Center Fellow and former Spinoza Chair, known for her work on assisted suicide, shaped in part by her husband's accident and death. |
| Margaret Fay Shaw was a pioneering Scottish American ethnomusicologist and folklorist who, with her husband John Lorne Campbell, collected Gaelic songs in the Hebrides, Nova Scotia, and the Aran Islands and helped drive the modern Scottish Gaelic revival. |
| Dame Margaret Rutherford was a celebrated English actress of stage, film, and television. |
| Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, daughter of Margaret Tudor and Archibald Douglas, was the granddaughter of King Henry VII of England, half sister to King James V of Scotland, and grandmother of King James VI and I. |
| Margaret Brown, later called the Unsinkable Molly Brown, was an American socialite and philanthropist who survived the 1912 Titanic sinking and tried to persuade her lifeboat to go back for survivors. |
