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Malcolm vs Malikah

American parents have registered 70,328 Malcolms since 1880, against 1,033 Malikahs. Malcolm is still ahead, with 1,257 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Malcolm against Malikah, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Malcolm 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

Malcolm 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 1979, when Malcolm had 295 and Malikah had 45.

Side by side

  Malcolm Malikah
Total US births 70,3281,033
Most in one year 1,49545
Babies in 2025 1,2576
Estimated living today 48,0001,000
Median age today 3233
Peak year 19921979
Best rank 206th boys2,187th girls
Rank in 2025 272nd13,208th
First recorded 18801968
Girls / boys 119 / 70,209949 / 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.

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 Malcolm Malikah
England and Wales 636342

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: Malcolm and Malikah.