Mallet
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: from French, English, and Catalan mallet ‘hammer’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/malɛ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mallet is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 4.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 37K
- USUnited States1 in 167K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 311 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈18,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) ‘blacksmith’ or nickname for an aggressive hammer-wielder; (ii) from the female personal name Malet, literally ‘little Mai’; (iii) a form of Mallard; (iv) from a nickname for an unlucky person; (v) from a pet-form of the French female name Malo.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Mallet is read(measured from records)
Mallet is one spelling over 2 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.
- French75%
from French, English, and Catalan mallet ‘hammer’. Old French ma(i)let, diminutive of ma(i)l (Latin malleus) either a metonymic occupational name for a smith, or possibly a nickname for a fearsome warrior.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
nickname for an unlucky person, from Old French maleit ‘accursed’ (Latin maledictus, the opposite of benedictus ‘blessed’).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the medieval female personal name Malet, a diminutive of Mal(le) (see Mall).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from a pet form of the personal name Malo (see Malo 1).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English17%
(i) ‘blacksmith’ or nickname for an aggressive hammer-wielder; (ii) from the female personal name Malet, literally ‘little Mai’; (iii) a form of Mallard; (iv) from a nickname for an unlucky person; (v) from a pet-form of the French female name Malo.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A type of hammer with a larger-than-usual head made of wood, rubber or similar non-iron material, used by woodworkers for driving a tool, such as a chisel. A kind of maul.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 in the world(measured from records)
Mallet 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 77K | — | Mallet | 3 |
| FR France | #171 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | 2.1K | Mallet | 311 |
| US United States | — | 1,997 | 1 in 167K | 2K | Mallet | 163 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,156 | 1 in 183K | 1.2K | — | — |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Mallet | 122 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 67K | — | Mallet | 3 |
| BE Belgium | — | 215 | 1 in 55K | 216 | Mallet | 34 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 147 | 1 in 23K | 147 | — | — |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Statbel — Noms de famille (family names); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
- Alain Manesson Malletb. 1630FRFrench cartographer and military engineer (1630–1706)
- Jacques-André Malletb. 1740CHGenevan astronomer (1740-1790)
- Jacques Mallet du Panb. 1749FRGenevan writer (1749-1800)
- Robert Malletb. 1810IEgeophysicist, civil engineer and inventor from Ireland (1810-1881)
- Anatole Malletb. 1837CHSwiss mechanical engineer (1837-1919)
- Robert Mallet-Stevensb. 1886FRFrench architect and designer (1886–1945)
- George Malletb. 1923LCSaint Lucian politician (1923-2010)
- Tania Malletb. 1941GBBritish actress and model (1941–2019)
- Grégory Malletb. 1984FRFrench swimmer
- David MalletGBScottish writer, editor and spy
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)
Attested in 27 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 2.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 2.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 2.5K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 2.5K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 2.4K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 2.3K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 2.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 2.1K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2K | #14,838 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 2K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 1.7K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.6K | #16,373 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Mallet come from?
- (i) ‘blacksmith’ or nickname for an aggressive hammer-wielder; (ii) from the female personal name Malet, literally ‘little Mai’; (iii) a form of Mallard; (iv) from a nickname for an unlucky person; (v… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Mallet?
- In the etymology graph, Maul is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Mallet?
- A machine transcription gives /malɛ/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Mallet mean?
- In French, from French, English, and Catalan mallet ‘hammer’.
- In which country does Mallet have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Mallet in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mallet.
- How common is the name Mallet?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,997 people named Mallet in 2010, about 1 in 167 thousand residents.
- How common is Mallet compared with other names?
- In France, Mallet is the 171st most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mallet?
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/malletThe 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, “Mallet” — the 171st most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.