Mala
given name · Latin script
Meaning: habitational name from Maid de Montcal, a village in Girona, or any of several other places named with Maid, which is of pre-Roman origin
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mælə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mala is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 20K(inferred from the name graph)
- ARArgentina1 in 4.3Kas Melo
- INIndia1 in 6.1Kas Mal
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 Mala 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)
- #849 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 309 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
1,522,803 named Melo
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled 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)
habitational name from Maid de Montcal, a village in Girona, or any of several other places named with Maid, which is of pre-Roman origin.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mala 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 1,522,803as Melo | 1 in 139 | 1.5M | Mala | 31 |
| IN India | #141 | 218,731as Mal | 1 in 6.1K | 219K | Mali | 202 |
| NP Nepal | — | 19,605as Mali | 1 in 1.5K | 20K | Mala | 16 |
| AR Argentina | — | 10,683as Melo | 1 in 4.3K | 11K | Mola | 39 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 20K | listed | Mala | 30 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 6,842as Melo | 1 in 495 | 6.8K | Mola | 11 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 6,765 | 1 in 1.6K | 6.8K | — | 2 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 4,471as Melo | 1 in 3.8K | 4.5K | — | 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Mala 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 Portuguese, habitational name from any of several places named Maia, especially one in Porto.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Ciudad de Mexico; Inquisición de México
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In English, Scottish; the servant of God
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Rosary, garland,
as a nameDictionary of Islamic Names
In men, v., to lay upon, to add to, to exaggerate. I njiéi malaa, balance, re- mainder due; to cover over, aS a house with grass
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Mala Zimetbaumb. 1918BEBelgian Jew Resistance member (1918–1944)
- Mala Powersb. 1931USAmerican actress (1931-2007)
- Mala Sinhab. 1936INIndian actress
- Mala Rajya Laxmi Shahb. 1950INpolitician and Member of Parliament
- Mala Royb. 1957INIndian politician
- Mala Htunb. 1969USAmerican political scientist
- Mala Gaonkarb. 1969USAmerican businessman
- Mala Ghediab. 1976AUAustralian actor and voice actor
- Mala Klineb. 1977SIresearcher (born 1977)
- Mala Emdeb. 1996DEGerman actress
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 61 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 7.1K | #1,228 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3.2K | #1,085 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 98 | #64,313 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 37 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 31 | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 5 | #112,653 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 5 | #20,503 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 4 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror) | 1975 | 2 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 1 | — |
| IN India | Indian names with gender (Kaggle) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Mala mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from Maid de Montcal, a village in Girona, or any of several other places named with Maid, which is of pre-Roman origin. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Mala?
- A machine transcription gives /mælə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Mala a male or female name?
- Mala 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.
- In which country does Mala 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 Mala most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mala is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 1.6 thousand people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Mala?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 6,765 people named Mala, about 1 in 1.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Mala compared with other names?
- In India, Mala is the 141st most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mala?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/malaThe 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, “Mala” — the 141st most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.