Maddelyn is an English spelling variant of Madeline, ultimately from Magdalene, meaning a woman from Magdala.
Maddelyn is a variant spelling of Madeline or Madeleine, names derived from Mary Magdalene — in turn derived from Magdala, a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee whose Aramaic name likely meant "tower" or "elevated place." Mary Magdalene, one of the most consequential figures in the New Testament narrative, was present at the Crucifixion and is described in the Gospel of John as the first witness of the Resurrection, which led early Christian writers to call her apostola apostolorum — the apostle to the apostles. Her name, freighted with that theological significance, spread through medieval Christendom in dozens of forms.
In France, Madeleine became particularly beloved — the iconic Parisian church, the soft shell-shaped cake made famous by Proust's involuntary memory in In Search of Lost Time, and the title character of Ludwig Bemelmans's beloved children's book series all bear the name and its diminutive forms. Bemelmans's plucky, fearless Madeline, hospitalized with appendicitis and perfectly content to show her scar to her envious classmates, has kept the name vivid in the English-speaking imagination since 1939. Maddelyn, with its doubled d and the y for the final e, belongs to a wave of American respellings that softened the French form while maintaining its musicality.
The doubled consonant gives the first syllable a decisive emphasis; the y at the close imparts a lightness. It is a name that carries literary and historical depth while wearing a distinctly modern orthographic costume — old meaning, new form.