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Malakhi vs Malia

American parents have registered 31,606 Malias since 1880, against 3,043 Malakhis. Malia is still ahead, with 872 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Malakhi against Malia, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Malakhi Malia

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

Malia has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1919 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Malakhi had 238 and Malia had 1,264.

Side by side

  Malakhi Malia
Total US births 3,04331,606
Most in one year 2381,700
Babies in 2025 125872
Estimated living today 3,00031,000
Median age today 814
Peak year 20192009
Best rank 919th boys192nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,436th349th
First recorded 19991919
Girls / boys 0 / 3,04331,606 / 0

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 Malias alive today are over 14; half the Malakhis are over 8. That is 6 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 Malakhi Malia
England and Wales 107734

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: Malakhi and Malia.