Humanverse

Mala vs Mallory

American parents have registered 60,144 Mallorys since 1880, against 698 Malas. Mallory is still ahead, with 825 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mala against Mallory, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mala Mallory

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 106 years in which either name was published, Mallory for 105 years and Mala for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Mala Mallory
Total US births 69860,144
Most in one year 513,348
Babies in 2025 10825
Estimated living today 64059,000
Median age today 4727
Peak year 19561986
Best rank 1,480th girls83rd girls
Rank in 2025 9,457th372nd
First recorded 19511914
Girls / boys 698 / 059,044 / 1,100

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Malas alive today are over 47; half the Mallorys are over 27. That is 20 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Mala Mallory
France 53,030
England and Wales 165355

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Mala and Mallory.