Malan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Variant of Mali/Mary with -an ending; cited in FC 361-362
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈmeɪɫən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Malan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. In Faroe Islands it is the 59th most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 1.2M(measured from records)
- CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 19K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 46K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 257 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Côte d’Ivoire, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Variant of Mali/Mary with -an ending; cited in FC 361-362.
Sources 1
- Welsh Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Malan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 77K | listed | Malan | 22 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 1.1K | — | 1 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Malan | 99 |
| US United States | — | 286 | 1 in 1.2M | 2K | Malan | 257 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 1.2M | — | Malan | 30 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈56 est. | ≈1 in 581K | — | Malan | 14 |
| DK Denmark | — | 50 | 1 in 117K | 50 | Malan | 24 |
| FO Faroe Islands | #59 | — | — | 104 | Malan | 3 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; the african-book-names-hodari-2003 register; Hagstova Føroya — Given names, living population (PX-Web, 2024); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
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 nameDictionary of American Family Names
In French, nickname from Old French malan(t) ‘sore’, ‘ulcer’ (Latin malandria).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
The follower.
as a nameThe African book of names
In Afrikaans, French Huguenot surname from "Mallan".
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
In Esperanto, accusative singular of mala
as a wordkaikki.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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 53 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 199 | #30,462 |
| FO Faroe Islands | Hagstova Føroya — Given names, living population (PX-Web, 2024) | — | 104 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 87 | #30,462 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 50 | #2,581 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1998 | 5 | — |
| FO Faroe Islands | Fólkanavnalistin — official advisory list of given names (Navnanevndin) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | The African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003) | — | — | — |
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
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Malan mean, and where does it come from?
- Variant of Mali/Mary with -an ending; cited in FC 361-362. Recorded by Welsh Surnames.
- In which country does Malan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.8 thousand people named Malan in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled malan.
- How do you pronounce Malan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈmeɪɫən/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- 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.
- How common is the name Malan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 286 people named Malan in 2020, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
- How common is Malan compared with other names?
- In Faroe Islands, Malan is the 59th most common given name of 194 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Malan?
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/malanThe 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, “Malan” — the 59th most common given name in Faroe Islands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.