Malia
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-li-a]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Variant Of Maria
- Origin
- Spanish
About the Name Malia
Malia descends from the Hawaiian form of Mary, derived through Hawaiian phonetic adaptation of the Latin Maria (see separate entry on Maria/Mary for the Hebrew Miryam etymology). The Hawaiian form Malia has been used continuously in Hawaiian naming traditions for over a century, since Christian missionaries brought the name to the Hawaiian Islands in the 19th century.
The single most influential modern American bearer is Malia Obama (Malia Ann Obama, born 1998, the elder daughter of US President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama). Malia Obama's high-profile childhood through her father's 2009–2017 presidency anchored the name in 21st-century American naming. The name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2005 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2009 (the year her father took office) and has held a top-200 range since.
The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the Hawaiian-cultural register, the underlying Mary biblical pedigree, and the soft three-syllable structure with vowel-rich rhythm. The name reads as both classical-religious (Hawaiian Christianity) and contemporary American. Common nicknames Mal (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Liana each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Maliyah and Maleah have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Hawaiian Malia and the broader Mary family across European languages.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Malia
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Malia by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2009 with 1,700 girls named Malia (girl rank #192 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #349 for girls (872 US births). That's 157 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 Malia 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 Malia the strongest states are Hawaii, Delaware, Maine.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | #40 | 160 |
| 2 | Delaware | #174 | 35 |
| 3 | Maine | #193 | 19 |
| 4 | Nevada | #208 | 133 |
| 5 | New Mexico | #209 | 63 |
| 6 | Florida | #209 | 787 |
| 7 | Maryland | #212 | 254 |
| 8 | Georgia | #213 | 487 |
| 9 | District of Columbia | #215 | 20 |
| 10 | Virginia | #226 | 337 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Malia in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maleah | Hawaiian For Mary/Maria: Also Means | Female | Hawaiian |
Looking for names like Malia?
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 Malia to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Malia against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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