Malik
Masculine · “King”
Malik is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 49,607 boys against 259 girls since 1880.
Malik has been spoken for well over a thousand years, in the Qur'an as a title of God and on the lips of Arabic speakers naming their sons ever since. It travels lightly: two syllables, every letter doing a job, familiar in Cairo, Karachi, Sarajevo, Paris and Houston alike. In American records it arrived mid-century and grew steadily for decades, and it is still handed out to babies today — recognizable everywhere, crowded nowhere.
How old is the name Malik?
Malik first appears in US birth records in 1949 — 76 years ago. The typical Malik alive today was born around 2002, making them about 23 years old. About 48,500 people named Malik are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Malik most popular?
Malik peaked in 1996, reaching #97 nationally. Today it ranks #437, 340 places below that high. See the whole 1996 chart.
Malik appears on these lists:
- Names that begin and end with the same letter
- Arabic names in American use
- Names that belong entirely to the 1990s
- all guides
Works in Arabic families too:
Where it comes from
From m-l-k (Semitic root: to rule, to possess) to Malik
The story of Malik
The root m-l-k is old Semitic and turns up across the family — Hebrew melekh, Aramaic malka, Phoenician inscriptions — always circling rule and ownership. In Arabic it produced both the everyday word for a king and al-Malik, 'the Sovereign', one of the divine names recited in Islam, which is why Malik became a name given to sons wherever Islam spread: Arabic-speaking North Africa and the Levant, Persia, Turkey as Melik, South Asia, the Balkans, West Africa, Indonesia. The eighth-century Medinan jurist Mālik ibn Anas, whose school of law still bears his name, fixed it firmly in Muslim memory. In the United States the name rose through the second half of the twentieth century, carried in part by Black American Muslim naming — Malcolm X took the name Malik as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Meaning
King, sovereign — or master, owner
Both readings come from the same Arabic root m-l-k, which carries the ideas of ruling and possessing. With a short first vowel, malik is the ordinary Arabic word for a king; with a long one, mālik means master or owner. The same root gives Hebrew melekh and Aramaic malka, both 'king'.
How the name formed
- m-l-kSemitic root: to rule, to possess
- mālik / malikArabic
- Malik
Related forms: مالك / ملك · Melik · ملک · Malik · Maliq · Malik
Pronouncing Malik
muh-LEEK
muh-LEEK is the usual American reading. In Arabic and much South Asian usage the stress sits on the first syllable instead: MAA-lik. Both are correct for the same name, so it is worth deciding early which one your family will use.
Nicknames for Malik
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
- 1949
- Most boys named
- 19973,381 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #97reached in 1996
- Change vs 2024
- −2.2%724 in 2025, from 740
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.
Malik in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- مالك / ملك in Arabic — transliteration
- Melik in Turkish — related form
- ملک in Urdu / Punjabi — transliteration
- Malik in Bosnian — same name
- Maliq in Albanian — spelling variant
- Malik in Indonesian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Maliks among us
people named Malik are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 2,359 born in 2025 was named Malik
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 Kelly test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Malik's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kelly climbed just as high around 1968, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kelly's path sketches the road Malik is walking now.
Malik is coming down from a big peak (#97 in 1996). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Malik is headed
Malik should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Malik beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Malik in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Works in many languages without translation — Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Bosnian, Indonesian, French — and is spelled the same way in most of them.
- Two syllables, no silent letters, and a spelling most Americans have already seen in print.
- A documented history stretching back to early Arabic, including the eighth-century jurist Mālik ibn Anas.
- Familiar enough to be read at first glance, yet a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate.
- Has established informal short forms in Mal and Leek, without needing one.
- Two pronunciations circulate — muh-LEEK and MAA-lik — so expect to correct people, or to accept both. Choosing one and saying it consistently from the start saves years of small negotiations.
- Maleek, Malick and Maliq all exist, so the spelling will sometimes need repeating even though yours is the most common one.
- The name carries a clear connection to Islam through al-Malik, one of the divine names. For many families that is the point; if it is not yours, know that others may still hear it that way.
- Malik is also a widespread surname in South Asia and, in the form Malík, in Central Europe — occasionally it gets filed as a last name on forms.
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What they receive
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Malik
Masculine · #437 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Maliks are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 48,500 people named Malik are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Malik in 2025?
- Malik ranks #437 among US boy names in 2025, with 724 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Malik?
- About 1 in every 2,359 US boys born in 2025 was named Malik — 724 in all.
- Will my child share the name Malik with classmates?
- Malik will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Malik
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Mario#438 · Moshe#435 · Jasai#439 · Frederick#435 · Travis#434 · Sylas#440 · Lewis#433 · Sergio#441
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Malik? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Malik and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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