Malvin
Masculine · “the poor settlement”
Malvin is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 2,673 boys against 12 girls since 1880.
Melville is a Norman place name that means, more or less, bad town. Mal and ville — the poor settlement, or the settlement on bad ground — and the family that took its name from it carried the description across the Channel, into Scotland, and eventually to the front of American children's names.
How old is the name Malvin?
Malvin first appears in US birth records in 1886 — 139 years ago. The typical Malvin alive today was born around 1939, making them about 86 years old. About 1,100 people named Malvin are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Malvin most popular?
Malvin peaked in 1913, reaching #734 nationally. See the whole 1913 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Malleville to Malvin
The story of Malvin
Norman families were named after the places they came from, and the places were named with unsentimental accuracy: Malleville and Maleville appear across Normandy, describing land nobody wanted. One such family went to Scotland after the Conquest, where the name became Melville and eventually a Scottish surname in its own right, and from there it followed Scottish emigration to America and moved to the front of the name in the nineteenth century. Malvin writes the first vowel as the Norman original had it, which is a rare case of a respelling accidentally moving toward the source.
Meaningscholars disagree
the poor settlement
The usual reading joins the Old French mal to ville. Some Melvins instead descend from a Gaelic name entirely, and the two lines are no longer separable in the American record.
How the name formed
- Malleville
- Melville
- Malvin
Pronouncing Malvin
MAL-vin
Two syllables with the weight at the front. Melvin and Malvin differ in the first vowel and are otherwise identical.
Nicknames for Malvin
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
- 1886
- Most boys named
- 192062 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #734reached in 1913
- Change vs 2021
- +20.0%6 in 2023, from 5
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.
Malvins among us
people named Malvin 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
Malvin 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
- Both syllables are readable, so the name is said correctly at sight.
- It carries two short forms, both standing names.
- The place behind it is real and documented in Normandy.
- Melvin is far commoner and will be written instead.
- The spelling is recorded for girls as well as boys in the United States.
- It reads clearly as a name of the early twentieth century.
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Malvin
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Malvins are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,100 people named Malvin are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Malvin in 2025?
- Malvin is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Malvin with classmates?
- Malvin 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 Malvin? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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