Mallory
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-llo-ry]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Army Counselor
- Origin
- German
About the Name Mallory
Mallory descends from the Old French surname malheure meaning "unhappy" or "unfortunate" — originally a medieval nickname applied to those who had suffered misfortune. The name first appears as an English surname continuously since the medieval period, anchored by the Mallory family of Yorkshire and the iconic 15th-century author Sir Thomas Malory (using Malory as a surname; c. 1415–1471, the iconic English author of Le Morte d'Arthur 1485, the foundational compilation of Arthurian legend).
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is the iconic Mallory Keaton of NBC's Family Ties (1982–1989, played by Justine Bateman) — the older sister of Michael J. Fox's character Alex P. Keaton, anchoring the name in 1980s American TV memory.
Notable other bearers include the iconic English mountaineer George Mallory (using Mallory as a surname, 1886–1924, the iconic British climber who died on the third British expedition to Mount Everest in 1924, with his iconic answer to why he wanted to climb Everest — "because it's there"); contemporary American actress Mallory Jansen; and the contemporary American basketball player Mallory Adams. Mallory's American climb peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, reaching the US top 100 girls' rank from 1985 through 1995. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the strong Mallory Keaton 1980s American cultural anchor and Sir Thomas Malory Arthurian-literary anchor, and the popular three-syllable -ory ending. Three flowing syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Norman-French and contemporary American. Common nicknames Mal (the dominant warm short form, casual and warm), Mally, Lori (back-end shortening, a popular standalone name on its own), and the rare Mory each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Mallory, Mallorie, and Malorie have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Old French malheure.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Mallory
US Popularity History (1986–2025)
Annual US births named Mallory by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1986 with 3,325 girls named Mallory (girl rank #83 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #372 for girls (825 US births). That's 289 places below its 1986 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 Mallory 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 Mallory the strongest states are Maine, New Hampshire, South Dakota.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maine | #163 | 22 |
| 2 | New Hampshire | #197 | 26 |
| 3 | South Dakota | #251 | 20 |
| 4 | West Virginia | #259 | 45 |
| 5 | Kentucky | #271 | 164 |
| 6 | Missouri | #336 | 158 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #344 | 145 |
| 8 | Tennessee | #346 | 209 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #350 | 148 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #350 | 306 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #841 | 192 |
| 2 | New York | #791 | 189 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #709 | 58 |
| 4 | Arizona | #707 | 81 |
| 5 | Colorado | #665 | 51 |
| 6 | Washington | #658 | 90 |
| 7 | Maryland | #619 | 55 |
| 8 | Utah | #604 | 48 |
| 9 | Texas | #600 | 513 |
| 10 | Oklahoma | #597 | 66 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Mallory in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Mallory?
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 Mallory to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Mallory against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).