Malcolm
The boy's name Malcolm has been in the national records since 1880, with 70,328 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 272nd. About 48,000 Malcolms are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 32.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Malcolm boys named Malcolm
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 70,328
- Estimated living today
- 48,000
- Median age today
- 32
- Peak year
- 1992
- Best rank
- 206th
- Rank in 2025
- 272nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 119 / 70,209
How old the living Malcolms are
born that year still alive today
Of the 70,328 babies given the name since 1880, about 48,000 are alive — 68 in every hundred. Roughly 15,000 of them are children and 7,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1993 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Scottish Gaelic, Goidelic
Royal name in Scotland, anglicised from various historical cel-gae names equivalent to Scottish Gaelic Maol Chaluim or Calum, Irish Maol Colm, Middle Irish Máel Coluim, Old Irish Máel Columb; proper nouns derived from máel (“tonsured”) from Proto-Celtic *mailos, and columb (“dove”) from Latin columbus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Malcolms
- Malcolm X (1925–1965)American Black rights activist
- Malcolm McDowell (born 1943)British actor
- Malcolm Turnbull (born 1954)Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018
- Malcolm Fraser (1930–2015)Australian politician, 22nd Prime Minister of Australia
- Malcolm III of Scotland (1031–1093)King of Scotland from 1058 to 1093
- Malcolm Young (1953–2017)Australian guitarist
- Malcolm I of Scotland (897–954)Scottish king
- Malcolm IV of Scotland (1141–1165)King of Alba from 1153 to 1165
People named Malcolm with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Malcolm is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Malcolm is most concentrated in Maine (3.1×), Louisiana (2.4×), the District of Columbia (2.4×), Mississippi (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1992
The most popular boys’ names the year Malcolm peaked:
Malcolm elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand boys | Malcolm | 2,398 | 53rd |
| Scotland boys | Malcolm | 1,741 | 55th |
| France boys | Malcolm | 1,625 | 423rd |
| England and Wales boys | Malcolm | 636 | 472nd |
| Ireland boys | Malcolm | 451 | 128th |
| Belgium boys | Malcolm | 141 | 587th |
| Switzerland boys | Malcolm | 68 | 634th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Malcolm | 6 | 271st |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Malcolm: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Malcolm | 19 | 0.002% | 727th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Malcolm | 48 | 0.011% | 293rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Malcolm | 1 | 0.002% | 180th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Malcolm: rank by region
In 2018, Malcolm was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Malcolm | 499 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Malcolm among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Malcolm | 22 | 61 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Malcolm lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 221 men called Malcolm were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Malcolm | 60 | 0.060 | 1,127 |
| Almería | Malcolm | 14 | 0.036 | 1,574 |
| Málaga | Malcolm | 31 | 0.035 | 1,419 |
| Palmas, Las | Malcolm | 14 | 0.024 | 2,896 |
| Balears, Illes | Malcolm | 13 | 0.021 | 2,520 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Malcolm | 10 | 0.019 | 3,506 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Malcolm against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.