Maleah
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-leah]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Hawaiian For Mary/Maria: Also Means
- Origin
- Hawaiian
About the Name Maleah
Maleah is a name of Hawaiian origin, understood as a Hawaiian form of Mary or Maria. That connection gives it a quiet, traditional grace beneath a sound that feels distinctly island-warm — flowing, vowel-rich, and gentle. The name carries the soft musicality so characteristic of Hawaiian names while remaining easy and intuitive for English-speaking families to say and spell, a balance that has made it especially appealing on the mainland.
Its charm lies in that blend of the familiar and the exotic: a recognizable Marian heritage wrapped in a lilting, sun-touched sound. With its open vowels and graceful rhythm, Maleah has the kind of melodic beauty that draws parents looking for something warm and a little out of the ordinary, a name that nods to deep tradition while sounding entirely fresh.
Maleah first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2002, reached its best rank of #594 in 2009, and remained in the rankings through 2022, when it appeared at #992. Along the way it stood at #880 in 2021 and #870 in 2020, and in total it was given to roughly 7,329 girls. Its long, steady presence marks Maleah as a soft, distinctive choice with genuine Hawaiian roots — a name that carries deep tradition while still feeling warm and current, equally at ease as a familiar classic and an island-bright surprise.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Maleah
US Popularity History (2002–2022)
Annual US births named Maleah by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2009 with 508 girls named Maleah (girl rank #594 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2022, ranked #992 for girls (266 US births). That's 398 places below its 2009 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Maleah Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Maleah the strongest states are Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #522 | 31 |
| 2 | Tennessee | #533 | 101 |
| 3 | Arkansas | #539 | 19 |
| 4 | Louisiana | #554 | 77 |
| 5 | Alabama | #562 | 80 |
| 6 | Iowa | #597 | 17 |
| 7 | Oklahoma | #603 | 23 |
| 8 | Georgia | #652 | 152 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #676 | 122 |
| 10 | Missouri | #683 | 71 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #1,209 | 89 |
| 2 | Texas | #895 | 132 |
| 3 | Illinois | #784 | 84 |
| 4 | Ohio | #748 | 116 |
| 5 | Michigan | #735 | 103 |
| 6 | Indiana | #722 | 75 |
| 7 | Maryland | #722 | 50 |
| 8 | Minnesota | #717 | 38 |
| 9 | North Carolina | #714 | 97 |
| 10 | South Carolina | #710 | 33 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Maleah in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Maleah?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Maleah to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Maleah against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).