Maalim
surname · Latin script
Meaning: teacher; scholar
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mɑːlim/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Maalim is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 3.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 8.5K
- FIFinland1 in 310K
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.
- Kenya (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 66 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈14,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
teacher; scholar
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Maalim 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | #664 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | 3 | Maalim | 44 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈6,900 est. | ≈1 in 8.5K | 3 | Maalim | 19 |
| US United States | — | 103 | 1 in 3.2M | 114 | Maalim | 66 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈45 est. | ≈1 in 733K | — | Maalim | 6 |
| FR France | — | ≈39 est. | ≈1 in 1.8M | 7 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | — | 29 | 1 in 352K | 29 | Maalim | 8 |
| FI Finland | — | 18 | 1 in 310K | 18 | — | 2 |
| NO Norway | — | 10 | 1 in 547K | 10 | — | 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: Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Mahadhi Juma Maalimb. 1972TZTanzanian politician
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 20 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 114 | #146,495 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 103 | #157,234 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 29 | #19,477 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 18 | #42,551 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 10 | #58,003 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 9 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 9 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 7 | — |
| KE Kenya | Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners | 2022 | 3 | #57 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Maalim mean, and where does it come from?
- teacher; scholar Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- How do you pronounce Maalim?
- A machine transcription gives /mɑːlim/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- In which country does Maalim have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Maalim in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled maalim.
- How common is the name Maalim?
- In the United States, the national register counted 103 people named Maalim in 2010, about 1 in 3.2 million residents.
- How common is Maalim compared with other names?
- In Kenya, Maalim is the 664th most common surname of 179,147 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Maalim?
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/maalimThe 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, “Maalim” — the 664th most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.