Mali

surname · Hindi · Latin script

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

Mali 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: Bambara/Malinke: possibly "rhinoceros" or "people"; Swahili: "wealth, riches"; Thai: female name meaning "jasmine flower".

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

7 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 Mal in IN India, PK Pakistan.

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●

Bambara/Malinke: possibly "rhinoceros" or "people"; Swahili: "wealth, riches"; Thai: female name meaning "jasmine flower"

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Mali 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●

  • Hindi615K75%
  • 90K11%
  • Vietnamese27K3%
  • English17K2%
  • Bangla15K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi615,39275%
89,93711%
Vietnamese26,9673%
English16,5112%
Bangla15,0212%

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◐

Mali is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname100K records spelled Mali6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Pakistan, Morocco

    Also written Ma-Li, Mālī, Māli, Mâli, Māḷī

  • Portuguese given name41K records spelled Mali91 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, France, India, United States

    Languages: Portuguese, French, English

    Also written Maeli, Maely, Maëly, Maély, Maéli

  • Hindi given name18K records spelled Mali85 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Spain

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Kannada

    Also written Muli, Molly, Maali, Moli, Moly

  • Spanish surname14K records spelled Mali17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Spain, United States, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Malí, Malì, M-Ali, Malï, Mälï

  • Swahili surname10K records spelled Mali3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Kenya, South Africa, United States

    Also written M-Ali

  • Indonesian surname8.9K records spelled Mali4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Mãlî, Mâli

  • Sinhala surname8.5K records spelled Mali9 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Mal, Malu, Maali, Malá, Mál

  • Marathi surname8.0K records spelled Mali2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written Māḷī

58 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●

Mali 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 Welsh, Colloquial Welsh form of Mary; earliest cite: Broniarth 1429.

    as a nameWelsh Surnames

  • Tunisie, Rio de Janeiro; from Maali

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In English, republic, Africa

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, Thai; a flower

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • Flor Mandissa, Mandysa, Mandyssa

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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●

010020030040019201940196019802000356 · 1965

Show as table
Mali in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1917–2017
Yearrecords
19172
191810
191910
192014
192124
192227
192325
192432
192549
192660
192759
192853
192974
193079
1931101
193291
1933110
193496
1935104
1936132
1937133
1938125
1939159
1940147
1941220
1942150
1943145
1944194
1945207
1946262
1947199
1948179
1949254
1950220
1951292
1952205
1953294
1954249
1955243
1956306
1957230
1958255
1959321
1960297
1961341
1962283
1963301
1964268
1965356
1966346
1967268
1968319
1969303
1970313
1971332
1972317
1973268
1974227
1975256
1976224
1977203
1978242
1979233
1980214
1981231
1982225
1983258
1984197
1985226
1986211
1987236
1988225
1989260
1990198
1991177
1992204
1993210
1994200
1995154
199684
199796
199843
19991
200728
20083
20093
20105
201117
201217
201340
201412
201542
20171

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 93 years between 1917–2017. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

18001850190019502000Šćepan Mali, b. 1800Christian Friedrich Mali, b. 1832Siniša Mali, b. 1972Andreja Mali, b. 1977Antara Mali, b. 1979Nada Mali, b. 1979Anais Mali, b. 1991Nikoloz Mali, b. 1999Sofia Mali, 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 85 sources across 43 countries.

Official registers attesting Mali
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—73K#231
NP NepalNPHC 2021 — Population by caste/ethnicity group (national), surname-shaped categories only202120K#64
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—3.5K#786
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.6K#8,105
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20251K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020751#32,755
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—665#357
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—569#13,230
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022560—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—546#12,358
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010458#46,487
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000268#68,569

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 · 733 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Mali?
We estimate roughly 1.8 million people bear Mali (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Mali have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.5 million people bear Mali in Brazil, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled malla.
Where is Mali most common?
Mali is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 139 people carrying it.
How common is Mali compared with other names?
In India, Mali is the 135th most common surname of 2,352,292 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Mali mean?
Recorded meaning: Bambara/Malinke: possibly "rhinoceros" or "people"; Swahili: "wealth, riches"; Thai: female name meaning "jasmine flower"
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mali

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, “Mali” — the 135th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Mali parses inside a full name →