Mal

surname · Latin script

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

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

/mæɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Mal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 6.1K(measured from records)
  • ARArgentina1 in 4.3Kas Melo
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 20Kas Mala

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Mal itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Brazil (measured from records)

1,522,803 named Melo

#849 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

6 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
309 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 6.1K (inferred from the name graph)

India

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MaliLatin(measured from records)
มาลาThai(measured from records)
মালBengali(measured from records)
말아Hangul(measured from records)
ΜολάGreek(measured from records)
మలTelugu(measured from records)

8 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Mala in BR Brazil, NP Nepal, NG Nigeria, Mola in AR Argentina, UY Uruguay and Mali in IN India.

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

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

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

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Mal counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Mal is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil—1,522,803as Melo1 in 1391.5MMala31
IN India#141218,7311 in 6.1K219KMali202
NP Nepal—19,605as Mali1 in 1.5K20KMala16
AR Argentina—10,683as Melo1 in 4.3K11KMola39
NG Nigeria—≈11,000 est.≈1 in 20KlistedMala30
UY Uruguay—6,842as Melo1 in 4956.8KMola11
CZ Czechia—6,765as Malá1 in 1.6K6.8K—2
EC Ecuador—4,471as Melo1 in 3.8K4.5K—12

1,522,803 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname), counting the spelling melo. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; NPHC 2021 — Population by caste/ethnicity group (national), surname-shaped categories only; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); MVČR — living population register 2017; INEC — civil registry names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

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

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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 name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Māl, Măl

  • French given name60 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, India, United States, Nigeria

    Languages: French, English, German

    Also written Mael, Maël, Maêl, Maél, Maèl

  • Arabic surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria

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

  • Sinhala surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Nigeria, Sri Lanka

    Also written Mali, Malu, Maali, Malá, මාලී

  • French surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, India, Cameroon

    Also written Mâl, Mãl, Mål, Mál, Măl

  • Turkish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Türkiye, Nigeria, Pakistan

    Also written Mâl, Màl, Mäl, Mâĺ, 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(measured from records)

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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

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).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 50 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
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—102#62,416
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19391—

Reference works 6

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

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Mal mean, and where does it come from?
from Slavic *mal- 'small'; also from Germanic/ON mal 'boundary marker' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
In which country does Mal have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 1.5 million people named Melo, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Mal most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mal is densest in India — about 1 in 6.1 thousand people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
How do you pronounce Mal?
A machine transcription gives /mæɫ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
How common is the name Mal?
In India, the national register counted 218,731 people named Mal, about 1 in 6.1 thousand residents.
How common is Mal compared with other names?
In India, Mal is the 141st most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mal?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mal

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

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 141st most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mal parses inside a full name →