Malikah
Feminine · “queen”
Malikah is given to both — 949 girls and 84 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Malika is the Arabic for a queen. It is the plain feminine of malik, king, and it is an ordinary word as well as a name — a queen in a story or on a throne is a malika. The h at the end of this spelling is English: it marks the Arabic feminine ending, and it is entirely silent.
How old is the name Malikah?
Malikah first appears in US birth records in 1968 — 57 years ago. The typical Malikah alive today was born around 1991, making them about 34 years old. About 900 people named Malikah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Malikah most popular?
Malikah peaked in 1977, reaching #2162 nationally. Today it ranks #13208, 11,046 places below that high. See the whole 1977 chart.
Where it comes from
From malika to Malikah
The story of Malikah
Malik and Malika are used across the Arabic-speaking world, and both entered American naming from the 1960s onward, chosen deliberately by African American families along with a great many other Arabic names. The h at the end is a convention of English transliteration: Arabic marks the feminine with a letter that is not fully sounded, and English writers add an h to show it is there. It is silent, and it is one of the reasons the same name appears in American records as Malika, Malikah and Maleeka.
Meaning
queen
From the Arabic malika, the feminine of malik, a king. The root behind both means to own or to rule, and it runs through a large family of words — including the divine name al-Malik, the Sovereign, counted among the names of God in Islamic tradition.
How the name formed
- malika
- Malikah
Related forms: Malika · Malika · Melike · Malkia
Pronouncing Malikah
mah-LEE-kah
Three syllables, stress in the middle, with the second vowel long. The final h is silent in English; Arabic gives the ending a light breath that English does not attempt.
Nicknames for Malikah
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
- 1968
- Most girls named
- 197945 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2162reached in 1977
- Change vs 2024
- −25.0%6 in 2025, from 8
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.
Malikah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Malika in Arabic — same name
- Malika in Urdu — same name
- Melike in Turkish — same name
- Malkia in Swahili — related form
Malikahs among us
people named Malikah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 267,878 born in 2025 was named Malikah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Malikah
- #13208
- Malikah on the 2025 chart
- #890
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Malikah went to 6 girls in 2025, but Malika is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 70, which makes it the 890th most-given girls’ name of the year — 12,318 places above the chart.
- Malika64
- Malikah6
About 1 girl in 22,961 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 267,878 for Malikah itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Gwenevere test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Malikah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Gwenevere climbed just as high around 1962, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Gwenevere's path sketches the road Malikah is walking now.
Malikah 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
Malikah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Malikah 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 one word long and about as strong as a meaning gets.
- It is used across a very large part of the world and recognized well beyond it.
- Three open syllables that survive any accent intact.
- It works for a child of either sex in the record, though nearly all are girls.
- Malika is the standard transliteration and will be written instead.
- The final h is silent and will be dropped by people writing quickly.
- It sits close to Malia, Melika and Maleeka, all of which appear in records.
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What they receive
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Malikah
Feminine · #13208 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Malikahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Malikah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Malikah?
- Malikah is one of 2 recorded spellings. Malika is the more common one — 64 births in 2025 against 6 for Malikah.
- How popular is the name Malikah in 2025?
- Malikah ranks #13208 among US girl names in 2025, with 6 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Malikah?
- About 1 in every 267,878 US girls born in 2025 was named Malikah — 6 in all.
- Will my child share the name Malikah with classmates?
- Malikah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Malikah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
John#13208 · Vinnie#13208 · Margery#13208 · Jossie#13208 · Tressa#13208 · Erie#13208 · Bernadine#13208 · Euna#13208
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Malikah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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