Malcolm

At the 2020 census, 10,408 Americans bore the surname Malcolm — 3,364th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 28,700.

By the numbers

People: 10,408
Rank: 3,364th
How common: 1 in 28,700
Per 100,000: 3.5

Where the name comes from

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.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Malcolm described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 60.6%
Black, not Hispanic 31.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.4%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Malcolm

Christian Malcolm (born 1979)Welsh sprinter
Norman Malcolm (1911–1990)American philosopher
Stephen Malcolm (1970–2001)Jamaican footballer
John Malcolm (1769–1833)British/Scottish politician and historian
Christopher Malcolm (1946–2014)Scottish actor and producer
Janet Malcolm (1934–2021)American journalist
Noel Malcolm (born 1956)British historian and journalist

People named Malcolm with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Malcolm

Also a first name

Malcolm has been given to 70,328 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1992. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.