It was named in honor of the German astronomer Johann Heinrich Mädler by the IAU in 1973.

[1] Mädler and collaborator Wilhelm Beer produced the first reasonably good maps of Mars in the early 1830s.

Their choice was strengthened when Giovanni Schiaparelli used the same location in 1877 for his more famous maps of Mars.

Mädler lies in the south of Meridiani Planum, close to the prime meridian and about 10° east of Beer.

A valley-lake system called Markikh Vallis that once held water flowed into Mädler crater from the south, and formed a lake within Mädler and the adjacent, smaller crater to the southeast.