Malek

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from a pet form of a vocabulary word meaning ‘small’ (Polish maty, Czech maly ‘small’, Slovenian mali)

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

Malek is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 11M(measured from records)
  • CZCzechia1 in 3.1K
  • TNTunisia≈1 in 4.3K

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.

United States (measured from records)

4,780 people, 2010

Sources
88 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Czechia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from a pet form of a vocabulary word meaning ‘small’ (Polish maty, Czech maly ‘small’, Slovenian mali). Compare Maly.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Malek 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 Malek is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—4,7801 in 70K4.9KMalek88
MY Malaysia—≈4,700 est.≈1 in 6.9K—Malek33
PK Pakistan—≈3,600 est.≈1 in 65K—Malek11
CZ Czechia—3,4531 in 3.1K3.5K——
TN Tunisia—≈2,700 est.≈1 in 4.3K2.3K—6
SI Slovenia—3091 in 6.8K309——
HR Croatia—3041 in 14K304——
IN India#8301231 in 11M123Malek88

4,780 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; MVČR — living population register 2017; INS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)

Malek is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname40 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, Germany, Malaysia

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Málek, Màlék, Malék, Màlek, Mălěk

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Malèk, Mālek, Málek, Maleḳ

  • Bangla surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Bangla, Odia

    Also written Maleque, মালেক, Maleq, Malake, Maleku

  • French surname47 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, Belgium

    Also written Malék, Màlék, Malèk, Màlek, Màlèk

  • Polish surname82 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Czechia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Slovak

    Also written Málek, Màlék, Malék, MâLěk, Màlèk

  • Spanish surname41 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Brazil, India

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Màlék, Malék, Mâlëk, Màlek, Málék

  • Sinhala surname3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Málek, Màlêk

60 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)

Malek 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.

  • from a pet form of Martin, Marek, Matej, or any other personal name beginning with Ma-.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • from a pet form of the personal name Malomir.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Algiers, Constantine, Oran, Tunisie, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires; owner

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

  • In Arabic, Owner

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • In Swedish, Malek (Malik) är ett arabiskt namn som betyder ’kung, härskare’. Feminina former är → Malika och Melika. En känd namnbärare är den svenske filmaren Malik Bendjelloul (1977–2014).

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

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)

19201940196019802000Ahmed Malek, b. 1931Fred Malek, b. 1936Miklós Malek, b. 1945Petr Málek, b. 1961Marcin Małek, b. 1975Roman Málek, b. 1977Rami Malek, b. 1981Ahmed Malek, b. 1995

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(measured from records)

Attested in 85 sources across 41 countries.

Official registers attesting Malek
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.9K#6,602
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020104.8K#7,008
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004.5K#6,938
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—309#1,235
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)2021304#2,642
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)2021273—
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—123#24,741
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—45#31,616

Reference works 11

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

Where does the name Malek come from?
from a pet form of a vocabulary word meaning ‘small’ (Polish maty, Czech maly ‘small’, Slovenian mali). Compare Maly. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
What does the name Malek mean?
Recorded meaning: from a pet form of a vocabulary word meaning ‘small’ (Polish maty, Czech maly ‘small’, Slovenian mali).
In which country does Malek have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 4.8 thousand people named Malek, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled malek.
Where is Malek most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Malek is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 3.1 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Malek?
In the United States, the national register counted 4,780 people named Malek in 2010, about 1 in 70 thousand residents.
How common is Malek compared with other names?
In India, Malek is the 830th most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Malek?

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

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, “Malek” — the 830th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Malek parses inside a full name →