Malle
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: smith, or nickname for a fierce fighter, from OF ma(i)l hammer (L malleus). 2 (A dictionary of surnames)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: naampy, 2015
/mal/(recorded in a dictionary) French · from Wiktionary
Malle is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 85th most common surname. Malle is also written ሞላ in Ethiopic and మలల in Telugu.
- DKDenmark1 in 49K(measured from records)
- FRFrance≈1 in 54K
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 610as Molla
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Malle itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (measured from records)
- #485 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 190 (measured from records)
- 1 in 49K (inferred from the name graph)
590,154 named Molla
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Malle in other scripts: Latin, Ethiopic and Telugu
(measured from records)Locally spelled Molla in IN India, BD Bangladesh, US United States and 2 more and ሞላ in ET Ethiopia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
How to pronounce Malle
- French:/mal/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- Spanish:/maʎe/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)pet-name for Mary; first attested Robertus filius Malle 1297 SRY
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
How Malle is read
(measured from records)Malle is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Hindi27%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Malle in Hindi.
- French24%
smith, or nickname for a fierce fighter, from OF ma(i)l hammer (L malleus). 2. metonymic occupational name for a maker of bags or nickname for someone who habitually carried one, from OF male bag (of Gmc origin). Cpds: Malmberg (‘ore hill’); Malmborg (‘ore town’); Malmgren (‘ore branch’); Malmqvist (‘ore twig’); Malmsten (‘ore stone’); Malmstrom (‘ore river’).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
metonymic occupational name for a mail carrier or person in charge of baggage animals, from malle ‘baggage’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
large suitcase; trunk
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English22%
pet-name for Mary; first attested Robertus filius Malle 1297 SRY
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Louis, French film director
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Mallorca [Majorca]
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Spanish5.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Malle in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where the surname Malle is found
(measured from records)Malle counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #85 | 590,154as Molla | 1 in 2.2K | 590K | Molla | 117 |
| BD Bangladesh | #32 | ≈280,000 est. | ≈1 in 609 | — | Molla | 102 |
| ET Ethiopia | #33 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 963 | listed | ሞላ | 33 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 7,572as Malla | 1 in 2.2K | 7.6K | — | 6 |
| US United States | — | 7,131as Moll | 1 in 47K | 7.1K | Molla | 190 |
| BH Bahrain | #162 | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Molla | 7 |
| DK Denmark | — | 120 | 1 in 49K | 763 | Molla | 13 |
590,154 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INEC — civil registry names; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Louis Malleb. 1932FRFrench film director, screenwriter, and producer (1932-1995)
- Anna Malleb. 1967USAmerican pornographic actress and director
- Chloe Malleb. 1985USAmerican-French fashion editor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)42 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Malle?
- It depends on the language: in French /mal/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /maʎe/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Malle mean?
- In French, smith, or nickname for a fierce fighter, from OF ma(i)l hammer (L malleus). 2.
- Where does the name Malle come from?
- pet-name for Mary; first attested Robertus filius Malle 1297 SRY Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Malle?
- In the etymology graph, Mora, May and Maia are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Malle?
- In India, the national register counted about 590 thousand people named Molla, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ecuador and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Malle most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Malle is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 49 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Malle?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 120 people named Malle, about 1 in 49 thousand residents.
- How common is Malle compared with other names?
- In India, Malle is the 85th most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Malle?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/malleThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Malle” — ranked 44th in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.