Why did Mary Magdalene have a surname?

Answer 1

Technically, she didn't. Magdalene is simply a word meaning that she was from the town of Magdala. It was not her surname. That is, however, how many surnames started. They were often based on the name of the town a person came from. Another example of this in The Bible is the name "Jesus the Nazarene," which means that Jesus was from the town of Nazareth, which is where he grew up. One more example is "Judas Iscariot," which might mean that Judas was from the town of Kerioth. However, in Hebrew, Nazareth means The Branch (eth Nazar) and Magdala means Tower (Migdol). In these examples there was a deeper reason for the surname. In fact the "sur-name" is the Tyre-name. That is because the French word "sur" meaning "sure" as in "sure as a rock" or "on top of" as in "on top of a rock" comes from a corruption of the Hebrew word ("Tsor") for the city of Tyre. This 'island state' was famous because of the rocky island on top of which ancient Tyre was situated. Gibraltar sits beneath a great rock and "Gibraltar" is named after Gebal-Tyre, the two great cities of ancient Phoenicia. It was two women of ancient Phoenicia whose sons were resurrected by the Jewish prophets Elijah and Elisha. It was the Phoenician woman Mary of Tyre or Magdala, a Phoenician colony on Lake Galilee, who was the first person to see the resurrected Jesus. This strongly suggests that a sort of code lies in the Biblical text to say that "Just as two Phoenician women received back their dead sons at the hand of God via two Jewish prophets, so Jesus the prophet whom Moses spoke of, the Son of God, resurrected at the hand of God and was first seen by a Phoenician woman's daughter. If Jews were writing this stuff to make up fables or stories, then these Phoenician characters would not have been invented into these roles. Therefore, they must have been actual roles really played out in history. Jesus of Nazareth means "Jesus The Branch" and refers to two prophecies in Isaiah 9: 1-2 and Isaiah 11:1. Nazareth is on the border of Naphtali and Zebulun. This region had been destroyed and turned to darkness by the Assyrians in circa 722 BC. Jesus, The Light of the World changed that but sadly most of the people in His day rejected Him. Happily, the Jews returning to Israel now, will accept Jesus although when is the crucial question.

Answer 2

In historical and biblical contexts, it was common for people to be identified by their place of origin to distinguish them from others with the same name. Mary Magdalene was likely called "Magdalene" because she came from the town of Magdala in Galilee, not because she had a surname in the modern sense.