Malik: Meaning of Baby Name Malik

About the Name Malik

Malik descends from the Arabic Mālik meaning "master," "king," or "sovereign" — and is one of the names of God in Islam (al-Malik, "the King"). The name has been used continuously in Muslim naming traditions for over a millennium and is also used in English-speaking countries.

Notable bearers include American basketball player Malik Beasley (born 1996, the Detroit Pistons NBA player); American actor Malik Yoba (born 1967, the iconic American actor of Fox's New York Undercover 1994–1999); contemporary British singer Zayn Malik (using Malik as a surname, born 1993, the British singer formerly of One Direction); and the contemporary American basketball player Malik Monk.

Malik's American climb has been substantial: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1985 to the US top 200 boys' rank by 2000 and the top 300 since. The name has been driven primarily by African-American and Muslim-American naming. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Arabic-Islamic-religious pedigree, the in-built distinctive king/master register, and the popular two-syllable -ik ending. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal warmth distinctive to Arabic-derived naming. The name reads as both classical-religious and contemporary American. Common nicknames Mal (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Lik each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Malik, Maleek, Maliq, and Malick have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Malik (essentially identical across Arabic/Turkish/Bosnian), Mailek (Persian alternate), and the original Arabic Mālik.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Malik

1,165

Arabic baby names in our dictionary

699

Arabic male names

266

5-letter M-names in our dictionary

767

M-male names total

1996–2025

years of US SSA records (27 total)

32,741

total US births named Malik (all years)

US Popularity History (1996–2025)

📉 Falling fast: Malik dropped 64 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#373 in 2020 → #437 in 2025).

Annual US births named Malik by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1996 with 4,026 boys named Malik (boy rank #97 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #437 for boys (724 US births). That's 340 places below its 1996 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.

Where in the US Is Malik Most Popular?

Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Malik the strongest states are District of Columbia, Michigan, Georgia.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	District of Columbia	#196	26
2	Michigan	#255	366
3	Georgia	#261	448
4	Mississippi	#283	115
5	Illinois	#290	394
6	Louisiana	#294	181
7	Maryland	#294	186
8	Florida	#304	588
9	Ohio	#342	303
10	Virginia	#346	230

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Colorado	#560	91
2	Washington	#558	123
3	Arizona	#547	114
4	Oklahoma	#538	67
5	Utah	#521	25
6	Kansas	#504	43
7	New Jersey	#476	140
8	California	#474	636
9	Texas	#463	640
10	Pennsylvania	#462	202

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Malik in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Looking for names like Malik?

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.

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Compare Malik to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Malik against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Malik vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Malik vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Malik vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Malik vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Malik vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Malik vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Malik vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Malik vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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