Malka
Feminine · Hebrew roots · “Queen (Hebrew)”
Malka is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 6,500 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Malka is the Hebrew word for queen, and it has been doing double duty as a name for a very long time — a word people said in ordinary speech and then hung on a daughter. It traveled with Yiddish-speaking families out of Eastern Europe and is still given in Jewish communities today, most visibly in the New York and New Jersey area. Two syllables, both open, with that firm l-k in the middle that keeps it from going soft.
How old is the name Malka?
Malka first appears in US birth records in 1946 — 79 years ago. The typical Malka alive today was born around 2009, making them about 16 years old. About 6,400 people named Malka are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Malka most popular?
Malka peaked in 2024, reaching #984 nationally. Today it ranks #1008, 24 places below that high. See the whole 2024 chart.
Malka appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From melekh (Hebrew, 'king') to Malka
The story of Malka
The word came first: malkah, queen, built on the Hebrew root that also gives melekh, king. It was in use as a personal name among Jewish families in Central and Eastern Europe, where Yiddish speakers said it as Malke, and it crossed the Atlantic with them. Jewish liturgy gave the word an extra life — the Sabbath is welcomed as a queen, Shabbat HaMalka, in a custom recorded in the Talmud and sung every Friday night in the hymn Lecha Dodi. In American records the name is a mid-twentieth-century arrival that never went away, and it has been rising again lately.
Meaning
Queen (Hebrew)
From the Semitic root m-l-k, 'to rule' — the same root behind melekh, 'king'. The feminine malkah appears in the Hebrew Bible as a common noun, as in malkat Sheva, the Queen of Sheba.
How the name formed
- melekhHebrew, 'king'
- malkahHebrew, 'queen'
- MalkeYiddish
- Malka
Related forms: מַלְכָּה (Malkah) · Malke · Malca · Malkah · Malika
Pronouncing Malka
MAHL-kah
Stress on the first syllable. Yiddish speakers often say MAHL-keh for the form Malke. English speakers read it correctly on the first try more often than not — the spelling gives away the sound.
Nicknames for Malka
High
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
- 1946
- Most girls named
- 2025248 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #984reached in 2024
- Change vs 2023
- +4.6%248 in 2025, from 237
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.
Malka in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- מַלְכָּה (Malkah) in Hebrew — transliteration
- Malke in Yiddish — same name
- Malca in Ladino / Sephardic usage — spelling variant
- Malkah in English — spelling variant
- Malika in Arabic — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, New Jersey, Maryland.
Malkas among us
people named Malka are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 6,481 born in 2025 was named Malka
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 Denese test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Malka's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Denese climbed just as high around 1954, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Denese's path sketches the road Malka is walking now.
Malka is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Malka is headed
Malka 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.
Malka beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Malka 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 not in dispute: malkah is the Hebrew word for queen, still current in modern Hebrew.
- Short, phonetic, and spelled the way it sounds — five letters, no silent anything.
- Has a ready-made affectionate form, Malkie, in real generational use rather than invented for the occasion.
- Recognized across Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino-speaking families, with a documented history of centuries.
- Rare enough in American schools that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate.
- The name reads as distinctly Jewish, and its American use is concentrated in a few states. Outside those communities it will often need a spelling-out, and sometimes an explanation.
- It sits close to several other names — Malika, Milka, Malaika — and gets misheard as one of them. Repeating it once usually settles the matter.
- Malka or Malkah? Both are used, and the shorter spelling is the more common one in US records; whichever you pick, the other will show up on some forms.
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What they receive
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Malka
Feminine · Hebrew roots · #1008 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Malkas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 6,400 people named Malka are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Malka in 2025?
- Malka ranks #1008 among US girl names in 2025, with 248 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Malka?
- About 1 in every 6,481 US girls born in 2025 was named Malka — 248 in all.
- Will my child share the name Malka with classmates?
- Malka will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Malka
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Carly#1008 · Baylee#1008 · Joelle#1008 · Zayla#1008 · Safa#1004 · Adara#1004 · Mattie#1004 · Novah#1004
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Malka? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Malka and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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