Malynda
Feminine · “honey”
There is honey in marmalade, hidden two languages back. The Greek melimelon was a honey-apple, meaning a quince; Portuguese made that marmelo and then marmelada for quince paste; and English took the word and applied it to oranges. Mel, honey, is still in there.
How old is the name Malynda?
Malynda first appears in US birth records in 1953 — 72 years ago. The typical Malynda alive today was born around 1978, making them about 47 years old. About 900 people named Malynda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Malynda most popular?
Malynda peaked in 1970, reaching #2395 nationally. Today it ranks #11932, 9,537 places below that high. See the whole 1970 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From mel to Malynda
The story of Malynda
The -inda ending is a period marker: Belinda, Clarinda, Dorinda, Florinda and Melinda all belong to the poems and plays of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where a fashionable heroine needed a name that sounded classical without being one. Writers built them from a Latin or Greek element and a suffix borrowed from Spanish and Italian, and several escaped into real use. Mel is the honey element and it has a longer reach than the name: mellifluous is honey-flowing, molasses comes through Portuguese from the same root, and marmalade contains it at two removes by way of a Greek word for a quince.
Meaningscholars disagree
honey, with a literary ending
Melinda was built in the eighteenth century from Latin mel, honey, with the -inda ending that Restoration and Georgian writers used for stage heroines. The a in this spelling is an American respelling of the unstressed first vowel. The compound is literary rather than inherited.
How the name formed
- mel
- Melinda
- Malynda
Related forms: Melinda · Melinda
Pronouncing Malynda
muh-LIN-duh
Three syllables, stress in the middle. Melinda and Malynda are said identically: the first vowel is reduced to nothing and the y says a short i, so neither change is audible.
Nicknames for Malynda
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
- 1953
- Most girls named
- 197936 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2395reached in 1970
- Change vs 2021
- +40.0%7 in 2025, 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.
Malynda in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Melinda in Hungarian — same name
- Melinda in Spanish — same name
Malyndas among us
people named Malynda are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 229,610 born in 2025 was named Malynda
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Malynda
- #11932
- Malynda on the 2025 chart
- #894
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Malynda went to 7 girls in 2025, but Malinda is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 66, which makes it the 894th most-given girls’ name of the year — 11,038 places above the chart.
- Malinda59
- Malynda7
About 1 girl in 24,353 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 229,610 for Malynda 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 Keiko test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Malynda's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Keiko climbed just as high around 1941, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Keiko's path sketches the road Malynda is walking now.
Malynda 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
Malynda beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Malynda in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The honey element is documented and turns up in several English words.
- Three short forms, all of which are full names in their own right.
- Three syllables with a regular stress that people read correctly.
- Melinda is far commoner and this spelling will be corrected toward it.
- It is strongly represented among older generations and places the name in the last century.
- The name was invented for the stage, which is a real history but not an ancient one.
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Malynda
Feminine · #11932 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Malyndas 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 Malynda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Malynda?
- Malynda is one of 2 recorded spellings. Malinda is the more common one — 59 births in 2025 against 7 for Malynda.
- How popular is the name Malynda in 2025?
- Malynda ranks #11932 among US girl names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Malynda?
- About 1 in every 229,610 US girls born in 2025 was named Malynda — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Malynda with classmates?
- Malynda will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Malynda
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Theodore#11932 · Hyla#11932 · Sondra#11932 · Mickie#11932 · Willadean#11932 · Allyn#11932 · Luis#11932 · Dimitra#11932
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Malynda? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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