Mahala

loc · Latin script

Meaning: Origin unidentified. In part, at least, of Finnish origin

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

Mahala is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in India.

rarermore common
  • INIndia
  • PKPakistan

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

India (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
76 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Origin unidentified. In part, at least, of Finnish origin.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

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

Where Mahala is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India—6.6KMahala76
PK Pakistan——Mahala6
US United States—1.6K—27
GY Guyana—8——
PL Poland—8——

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)

Mahala is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Māhalā

  • Russian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek

    Also written Магала, Magala, Magalã

  • Bangla given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written Mihila, Mahula, Mahālā, ମହଲା

49 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)

Mahala 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 English, Hebrew; tenderness

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • Ternura

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • In English, A neighborhood or residential area in Balkan countries.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Swahili, alternative form of pahali

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Serbo-Croatian, city block

    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)

18001850190019502000Mahala Einaer Chapman Riggs, b. 1812Catharine Mahala Garrison, b. 1832Mahala Ashley Dickerson, b. 1912Mahala Andrews, b. 1939Mahala Wynns, b. 1948Genny Mahala, b. 1992

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 25 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Mahala
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—6.6K#1,301
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—1.9K#793
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010461#46,219
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000447#45,149
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020423#52,889
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20268—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—8#154,843
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20266—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—6#181,404
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 Mahala mean, and where does it come from?
Origin unidentified. In part, at least, of Finnish origin. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Mahala have the most bearers?
Mahala is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled mahala.

What do you want to know about Mahala?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Mahala”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mahala parses inside a full name →