Magnus, meaning "Great" in Latin, was sometimes used as a first name among Romans but was not particularly common among them. The best-known Roman bearing the name was the third-century usurper. The name gained wider popularity in the Middle Ages, various European peoples, and their royal houses, being introduced to it upon being converted to the Latin-speaking Catholic Christianity. This was especially the case with Scandinavian royalty and nobility.
As a Scandinavian forename, it was extracted from the Frankish ruler Charlemagne's Latin name "Carolus Magnus" and re-analyzed as Old Norse magn-hús = "house of might/power".
Magnus may refer to:
Read more about Magnus: Species
Famous quotes containing the word magnus:
“Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.”
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger (b. 1929)
“Every orientation presupposes a disorientation.”
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger (b. 1929)
“A pathological business, writing, don’t you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!”
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger (b. 1929)