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Malachi vs Malikah

American parents have registered 66,048 Malachis since 1880, against 1,033 Malikahs. Malachi is still ahead, with 2,701 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Malachi against Malikah, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Malachi Malikah

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

Malachi has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1981, when Malachi had 44 and Malikah had 41.

Side by side

  Malachi Malikah
Total US births 66,0481,033
Most in one year 2,79045
Babies in 2025 2,7016
Estimated living today 64,0001,000
Median age today 1333
Peak year 20061979
Best rank 150th boys2,187th girls
Rank in 2025 134th13,208th
First recorded 18801968
Girls / boys 290 / 65,758949 / 84

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 Malikahs alive today are over 33; half the Malachis are over 13. 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 Malachi Malikah
England and Wales 4,724342

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: Malachi and Malikah.