Mal

surname · Hindi · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Mal is a surname, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from Slavic *mal- 'small'; also from Germanic/ON mal 'boundary marker'.

rarermore common
  • THThailand1 in 927◐
  • LALaos1 in 4.1K
  • ARArgentina1 in 4.3K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈1.8M ●

across 13 countries

#768 ●

of 21M surnames

7 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
271 ●

1.5M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 139 ◐

Brazil

Spellings & scripts●

MalLatin · Hindi●775K records
มาลาThai · Thai●9.5K records
মালBengali · Bangla●3.6K records
말아Hangul · Korean●6 records
ΜολάGreek · Greek●1 records
మలTelugu · Telugu●0 records
മാളMalayalam · Malayalam●0 records

8 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Mola in PH Philippines, AR Argentina, FR France and 5 more, Mala in NP Nepal, NG Nigeria, GB United Kingdom and 3 more, Marlee in US United States, AU Australia, CA Canada and Malla in BR Brazil, EC Ecuador.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

from Slavic *mal- 'small'; also from Germanic/ON mal 'boundary marker'

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Mal is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil—1,522,803△225 rec.1 in 1391.5MMalla31
IN India#135218,7311.3M rec.1 in 6.1K219KMal187
TH Thailand#301148,92775K rec.—#188,702มาลี115
NP Nepal—19,605△48 rec.1 in 1.5K20KMala17
AR Argentina—10,683△3.5K rec.1 in 4.3K11KMola38
US United States—9,73144K rec.1 in 34K28KMarlee271
PK Pakistan#3168,094226 rec.——Mal30
EC Ecuador—7,572△56 rec.1 in 2.2K7.6KMalla15
CZ Czechia—6,765△9 rec.1 in 1.6K6.8K—2
NG Nigeria—4,7474.9K rec.—listedMala26
ES Spain—4,462△1.6K rec.1 in 11K4.5KMola71
AU Australia—3,3342.9K rec.—97Marlee100

Roughly 1.5M people in Brazil bear this name (about 1 in 139). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Hindi775K70%
  • 199K18%
  • Bangla35K3%
  • English19K2%
  • Urdu15K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi774,89970%
198,67118%
Bangla34,9903%
English18,7912%
Urdu15,0911%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Mal is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname211K records spelled Mal3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States

    Also written Măl, Māl

  • French given name48K records spelled Mal60 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, India, United States, Canada

    Languages: French, English, German

    Also written Mael, Maël, Maêl, Maél, Maèl

  • Arabic surname8.6K records spelled Mal10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

    Also written Mãl, Mâl, Màl, M-Al, Mäl

  • Sinhala surname6.8K records spelled Mal9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Sri Lanka, South Africa

    Also written Mali, Malu, Maali, Malá, Mál

  • French surname3.9K records spelled Mal12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, India, Belgium, Cameroon

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Mâl, Màl, Mãl, Mäl, Måļ

  • Turkish surname3.1K records spelled Mal8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Türkiye, Nigeria, Pakistan

    Also written Mäl, Màl, Māl, Mâl, Mãl

54 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Mal is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Russian, "small." Husband of Princess Olga (Elena).

    as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)

  • In German, (n) time, mark; (conj) times

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German

  • In Portuguese, poorly, hardly

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

  • In sit-pro, squirrel

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

  • In dra-nor-pro, no, not

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

05101519001950200013 · 1950

Show as table
Mal in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
18807
18835
19127
19135
19157
19185
19196
19215
19265
19296
19307
19338
19356
19365
19376
193810
19406
19419
19427
19438
19447
19455
19466
19478
19487
19496
195013
19519
195211
19535
19549
19555
19565
19578
195810
19599
19605
19616
19628
19636
19668
19696
20085
20125
20197
20207
20216
20227
20246
20258

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 50 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Enrique Mal de Vizoso, b. 1896Vitan Mal, b. 1946Raoul Mal, b. 2000

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 48 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Mal
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—219K#104
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—99K#21
XK KosovoASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search)—1.7K#453
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.2K#8,445
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020497#8,445
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020415#53,758
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010291#67,747
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000233#76,700
XK KosovoASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search)2025198—
XK KosovoASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search)2023188—
XK KosovoASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search)2024179—
XK KosovoASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search)2022161—

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 223 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Mal?
We estimate roughly 1.8 million people bear Mal (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Mal have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.5 million people bear Mal in Brazil, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled malla.
Where is Mal most common?
Mal is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 139 people carrying it.
How common is Mal compared with other names?
In India, Mal is the 135th most common surname of 2,352,292 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Mal mean?
Recorded meaning: from Slavic *mal- 'small'; also from Germanic/ON mal 'boundary marker'
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mal

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Mal” — the 135th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Mal parses inside a full name →