Melek
given name · Turkish · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Melek is a given name, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the 49th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Turkish and Kurdish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: angel.
- TRTürkiye1 in 415◐
- CYCyprus1 in 1K
- SYSyria1 in 1.2K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈218K ●
- 4 ●
- Sources
- 101 ●
- 1 in 415 ◐
across 12 countries
recorded for this name
1.3M records
Official registry-verified
Türkiye
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Malak in ES Spain, MA Morocco, IT Italy and מלק in IL Israel, PL Poland, IR Iran.
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●
angel
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | #49 | 197,476 | 1.2M rec. | 1 in 415 | 197K | Melek | 99 |
| SY Syria | #118 | 27,537 | 28K rec. | — | — | Melek | 7 |
| ES Spain | — | 8,478△ | 87 rec. | 1 in 5.9K | 8.5K | Malak | 15 |
| FR France | — | 4,205△ | 10 rec. | 1 in 16K | 4.2K | — | 3 |
| US United States | — | 3,842△ | 1.2K rec. | 1 in 87K | 3.8K | Melek | 101 |
| IL Israel | — | 3,319 | 5K rec. | — | 496 | מלק | 19 |
| CY Cyprus | #110 | 2,240 | 2.9K rec. | — | — | Melek | 15 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 1,685 | 1.4K rec. | — | 478 | Melek | 26 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,506△ | 364 rec. | 1 in 6.8K | 1.5K | Melek | 17 |
| BE Belgium | — | 1,267 | 1.3K rec. | — | 201 | Melek | 21 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | #521 | 1,170 | 551 rec. | — | 4 | Melek | 13 |
| BR Brazil | — | 885△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 239K | 885 | — | 2 |
Roughly 197K people in Türkiye bear this name (about 1 in 415). 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●
- Turkish1.1M78%
- Kurdish200K15%
- Arabic20K2%
- German18K1%
- French15K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Turkish | 1,053,332 | 78% |
| Kurdish | 200,052 | 15% |
| Arabic | 20,444 | 2% |
| German | 18,094 | 1% |
| French | 15,270 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Melek 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 Turkish, 1.Tanrı ile insan arasında aracılık yaptığına ve nurdan olduğuna inanılan manevi varlık.2. Terbiyeli, uysal kimse.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
king
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Swedish, Se Malak.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In German, männl. Vom., türkische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Jewish: from a vocabulary element meaning ‘king’ in Hebrew. It originated in part as a nickname, in part as a short form of various compound names containing this element, for example Elimelek ‘God is king’.
as a word
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1988 | 1 |
| 1993 | 1 |
| 1995 | 1 |
| 1998 | 1 |
| 1999 | 4 |
| 2000 | 3 |
| 2001 | 3 |
| 2002 | 11 |
| 2003 | 7 |
| 2004 | 10 |
| 2005 | 14 |
| 2006 | 11 |
| 2007 | 11 |
| 2008 | 17 |
| 2009 | 15 |
| 2010 | 26 |
| 2011 | 15 |
| 2012 | 27 |
| 2013 | 15 |
| 2014 | 24 |
| 2015 | 30 |
| 2016 | 30 |
| 2017 | 35 |
| 2018 | 26 |
| 2019 | 23 |
| 2020 | 22 |
| 2021 | 26 |
| 2022 | 24 |
| 2023 | 15 |
| 2024 | 16 |
AT Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) — 30 years between 1988–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Melek Özdilb. 1916TRTurkish rower
- Melek Delilbaşıb. 1947TRTurkish professor of medieval history (1947–2022)
- Melek Baykalb. 1954TRTurkish actor (born 1954)
- Melek Gençoğlub. 1959TRTurkish screenwriter (born 1959)
- Melek Ametb. 1960ROCrimean Tatar, fashion model
- Mine Tugayb. 1978TRnot in their usual nameTurkish actor (born 1978)
- Melek Mossob. 1988TRTurkish musician (born 1988)
- Melek Hub. 1989TRTurkish table tennis player (born 1989)
- Melek Bilgeb. 1989TRTurkish basketball player (born 1989)
- Melek SevenTRTurkish screenwriter
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 73 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | TÜİK NIP — most used given names | 2025 | 197K | #14 |
| TR Türkiye | TÜİK NIP — newborn names | 2021 | 2.2K | #29 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 2K | #704 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 633 | #2,337 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 478 | #3,297 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 464 | #330 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | — | 455 | #1,217 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 424 | #2,797 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 421 | #20,132 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 399 | #20,772 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 364 | #59,889 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 322 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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 · 430 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Melek?
- We estimate roughly 218 thousand people bear Melek (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Melek have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 197 thousand people bear Melek in Türkiye, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled melek.
- Where is Melek most common?
- Melek is densest in Türkiye, where the national register counts about 1 in 415 people carrying it.
- How common is Melek compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Melek is the 49th most common given name of 294,597 given names recorded there.
- Is Melek a male or female name?
- Melek 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 Melek mean?
- Recorded meaning: angel
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/melekThe 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
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, “Melek” — the 49th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.