This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "Magnus" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Look up Magnus in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Magnus, meaning "Great" in Latin, was used as cognomen of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in the first century BC. The best-known use of the name during the Roman Empire is for the fourth-century Western Roman Emperor Magnus Maximus. The name gained wider popularity in the Middle Ages among various European peoples and their royal houses, being introduced to them 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 = "power house".[1]
