Malan

Meaning & origin●

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Languages●

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◐

Malan is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

• a separate given name2.7K records spelled Malan3 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in India, United States, Pakistan

  Also written Malán, Mălan

53 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●

Malan 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 French, nickname for a small man, a derivative of maly (see Maly).

  as a name·Dictionary of American Family Names

• In French, nickname from Old French malan(t) ‘sore’, ‘ulcer’ (Latin malandria).

  as a name·Dictionary of American Family Names

• The follower.

  as a name·The African book of names

• In Afrikaans, French Huguenot surname from "Mallan".

  as a word·sanames.co.za — South African surnames

• In Esperanto, accusative singular of mala

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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●

EC INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) — 112 years between 1900–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

• Henriette Malan Fletcherb. 1830(1830-1917)
• Malan Jacobsenb. 1973Danish writer and journalist
• Malan Krugerb. 1995NANamibian cricketer

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●

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 343 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Malan?

We estimate roughly 308 people bear Malan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 3 countries in our records.

In which country does Malan have the most bearers?

Malan is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled malan.

How common is Malan compared with other names?

In Faroe Islands, Malan is the 57th most common given name of 1,073 given names recorded there.

Is Malan a male or female name?

Malan is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.

What does the name Malan mean?

Recorded meaning: Variant of Mali/Mary with -an ending; cited in FC 361-362.