Maliha
Feminine · “Beautiful”
Malīḥa is Arabic for beautiful, and the route to that meaning is unexpected: the root is milḥ, salt. Arabic idiom made salty into attractive long ago, the way English made a person's taste into their judgment, and the name has carried the pleasant sense ever since.
How old is the name Maliha?
Maliha first appears in US birth records in 1982 — 43 years ago. The typical Maliha alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 1,400 people named Maliha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Maliha most popular?
Maliha peaked in 2009, reaching #2041 nationally. Today it ranks #5238, 3,197 places below that high. See the whole 2009 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From malīḥa to Maliha
The story of Maliha
The word is old and the name is used across the Arabic-speaking world, Iran, Turkey and South Asia. It is especially common in Pakistan and among Urdu speakers, where Maliha is an ordinary name of the twentieth century, and it appears in Bangladesh and among Indian Muslims. American records show it from the 1980s with South Asian and Arab immigration, rising steadily rather than sharply, with its peak in 2009 — the profile of a name arriving with a growing community rather than one carried by an event or a celebrity.
Meaning
Beautiful, comely, pleasant
From Arabic malīḥ, malīḥa, from the root m-l-ḥ, salt. The primary sense is salted, and the derived and now dominant sense is comely, pleasant or good-looking; the same shift gives malāḥa, beauty or charm. The reading is settled and the salt connection is documented in the classical dictionaries.
How the name formed
- malīḥa
- Maliha
Related forms: مليحة · ملیحہ · Maliheh · Meliha · মালিহা
Pronouncing Maliha
mah-LEE-hah
Three syllables, stress in the middle. The ḥ is a pharyngeal made deep in the throat, which English replaces with a plain h or drops entirely, giving mah-LEE-uh.
Nicknames for Maliha
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
- 1982
- Most girls named
- 2009100 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2041reached in 2009
- Change vs 2024
- −31.4%24 in 2025, from 35
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.
Maliha in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- مليحة in Arabic — transliteration
- ملیحہ in Urdu — same name
- Maliheh in Persian — related form
- Meliha in Turkish — spelling variant
- মালিহা in Bengali — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, Texas, Florida.
Malihas among us
people named Maliha are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 66,969 born in 2025 was named Maliha
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Dory test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Maliha's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Dory climbed just as high around 1964, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Dory's path sketches the road Maliha is walking now.
Maliha sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Maliha beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Maliha in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled, warm and has an unusually good story behind it.
- It is recognized from Morocco to Bangladesh.
- The syllables are open and simple for English speakers.
- Maliha, Meliha and Maleeha are all in use and will be written for each other.
- The Arabic pharyngeal h is lost in English speech.
- It reads as unambiguously Muslim, which some families weigh.
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What they receive
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Maliha
Feminine · #5238 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Malihas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,400 people named Maliha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Maliha in 2025?
- Maliha ranks #5238 among US girl names in 2025, with 24 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Maliha?
- About 1 in every 66,969 US girls born in 2025 was named Maliha — 24 in all.
- Will my child share the name Maliha with classmates?
- Maliha will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Maliha
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Irena#5238 · Esma#5238 · Dagny#5238 · Venice#5238 · Lisbeth#5238 · Loralie#5238 · Alania#5238 · Erma#5238
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Maliha? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Maliha and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Weighing a whole shortlist? Add the rest in the builder, or settle it with a bracket.
Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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