Malachy vs Malik

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Malachy Malik

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 78 years in which either name was published, Malik for 64 years and Malachy for 14 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

• 1897–1947 Malachy ahead
• 1949 Malik ahead
• 1950 Malachy ahead
• 1952 Malik ahead
• 1957–1961 Malachy ahead
• 1964–2025 Malik ahead

Side by side

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 Maliks alive today are over 23; half the Malachys are over 18. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Malachy New York (10.4×)
• Malik the District of Columbia (3.9×), Maryland (2.5×), Georgia (2.2×)

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.

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

• Malachy vs Malcolm
• Malachy vs Malachi
• Malachy vs Mallory
• Malachy vs Malia
• Malachy vs Malinda
• Malik vs Malcolm
• Malik vs Malachi
• Malik vs Mallory