Male
Masculine
Male on a birth record is usually not a name. Forms have a field for sex and a field for the given name, and when a certificate is filed before a family has decided, or when a transcription goes wrong, the contents of one field end up in the other. That is the likeliest account of most entries, and it should be said before anything else, because the alternative accounts are more interesting and less probable.
How old is the name Male?
Male first appears in US birth records in 1963 — 62 years ago. The typical Male alive today was born around 1993, making them about 32 years old. About 1,500 people named Male are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Male most popular?
Male peaked in 1991, reaching #679 nationally. See the whole 1991 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From A form field appearing in a name column to Male
Our story of Male
There is a real place with this name and it is worth knowing about. Male is the capital of the Maldives, an island city of extraordinary density, almost entirely built over, with the sea a few hundred meters away in every direction and no room left to grow. It is said in two syllables, with the stress on the second, and has no connection to the English word at all. Whether any American family named a child for it is not recorded and is not likely. What is recorded is a pattern that turns up throughout the American registers wherever administrative categories and personal names share a page: placeholders, field labels and transcription errors accumulate into what looks like a naming trend, and the honest reading of them is usually clerical rather than parental.
Meaningnot established
Not established
As an English word the meaning is obvious and is almost certainly not what any family intended. As a name it may in some cases be a genuine choice, or a transcription of a name from another language that arrived at these letters, or a form-field artifact. The record cannot distinguish these, and the honest position is that most of the entries are probably not deliberate.
How the name formed
- A form field appearing in a name column
- Placeholders and transcription errors accumulating
- Also a genuine place name in the Indian Ocean
- Recorded steadily and rarely across a century
Related forms: Male
Pronouncing Male
MAYL
One syllable when read as the English word. The Maldivian city is two, mah-LAY, with the stress at the back, and nothing about the spelling would tell an English reader that.
Nicknames for Male
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1963
- Most boys named
- 1991223 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #679reached in 1991
- Change vs 2014
- −71.9%18 in 2015, from 64
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Male in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Male in Dhivehi — related form
Males among us
people named Male are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Male sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is short and unmistakable in sound, whatever the difficulties in meaning.
- Mal and Lee are both available and both read as ordinary names.
- It is genuinely unshared, which some families will value.
- The word is a category label in English and will be read as one every time.
- A great many of the register entries are probably clerical rather than chosen.
- There is no meaning to give that a child would want to be given.
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What they receive
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Male
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Males are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,500 people named Male are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Male in 2025?
- Male is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Male with classmates?
- Male will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Michael#21 · Matthew#32 · Mark#244 · Mason#39 · Martin#335 · Marvin#699 · Melvin#958 · Marcus#258
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Male? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Male and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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