Magdalena is an asteroid from Serennu’s list. Besides this could she be seen as special only for the reason that she rotates very slowly. Magdalena is asteroid #318 and a very usual asteroid in the Outer Main Belt.

Nobody knows why asteroid #318 got named Magdalena. Asteroids with preceding and with following numbers got girl names too. Hence they probably got girl names only to supply them with female names in accordance with the rules of naming asteroids. Magdalena is hence only a person name asteroid.

Maybe analyzing the origin of the name can still give some additional insight. Magdalena means “from Magdala”, where Magdala (מגדלא) is the Aramaic name of a city, which is named Migdal (מגדל) in Hebrew. Migdal (מגדל) is translatable and means tower. It is among experts widely believed that Migdal (מגדל) refers to a place, which is also known as “the tower of fish” and this probably refers to processing fish. Maybe the people there dried fish in a tower, but I wonder why this should be special enough to distinguish this place from all other towns living from fishing. Obviously they processed the fish differently. Maybe Migdal (מגדל) was especially rich in fish. The first person with the name Magdalena seems to be the Biblical Maria Magdalena, who didn’t live in Magdala (מגדלא). So “from Magdala” means in her case having left Magdala (מגדלא) or “the tower of fish” for living together with Jesus’ disciples, who were fishermen too.

The Jewish mystics see quite deep divine secrets hidden in tales, where fish and fishermen occur. These deep divine secrets are derived from Hebrew script and numerology. Maybe Magdalena could describe some mysteries when aspected by other Biblical themed asteroids, but this would be a reach for Magdalena alone considering her not so prominent role and that the asteroid is named Magdalena only instead of Maria Magdalena or something similar. So when not found in a combination with Biblical themed asteroids, Magdalena will be nothing else than a person name asteroid, hinting only to persons with the name Magdalena.