Malte

given name · Latin script

Meaning: obsolete form of Melde (“saltbush”)

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/maltə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Malte is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 3.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SESweden1 in 891
  • DKDenmark1 in 1.5K

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈24,000 people, est.

Sources
200 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 891 (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

obsolete form of Melde (“saltbush”)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Malte, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Malte 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.

Where Malte is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#448≈24,000 est.≈1 in 3.4K5Malte200
SE Sweden—11,4541 in 89111KMalte42
DK Denmark—4,0311 in 1.5K4K—1
CH Switzerland—≈340 est.≈1 in 25K10Malte34
AT Austria—≈160 est.≈1 in 57K46Malte23
FI Finland—1331 in 42K263—4

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: the de-munich-vornamen register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Malte is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Danish given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Sweden, United States, Norway

    Languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian

    Also written Maltē

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Malté

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Sweden, United States, Belgium

    Also written Malté

48 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Malte is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, aus dem Dänischen übernommener männl. Vom., der auf eine alte deutsche zweistämmige Kurzform von Helmolt (ahd. hdm »Helm« + ahd. -walt zu waltan »walten, herrschen«) zurückgeht. Der Name ist durch

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In Swedish, Malte har föreslagits vara en tysk smekform till Helmold, av äldre Helmwald, sammansatt av fornhögtyskt helm ’hjälm’ och → -vald. Namnet Malte förekom i Danmark under medeltiden. Det har blivit ett populärt namn i Sverige de senaste decennierna. I både den rikssvenska och finlandssvenska almanackan 28 november.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In French, Malta (an archipelago and country in Southern Europe, in the Mediterranean Sea)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Portuguese, malt (sprouted grain used in brewing)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Slovak, dative/locative singular of Malta

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1700180019002000Wilhelm Malte I, b. 1783Malte Jaeger, b. 1911Malte Ludin, b. 1942Malte Grunert, b. 1967Malte Arkona, b. 1978Malte Metzelder, b. 1982Malte Spitz, b. 1984Malte Mohr, b. 1986Malte Jakschik, b. 1993Malte Gårdinger, b. 2000

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)

InformalHallo Malte,Hi Malte, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 40 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Malte
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—11K#361
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20206.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20196.1K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20185.8K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20175.5K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20165.2K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20154.9K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20144.6K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20134.2K—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—4K#147
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20123.9K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20113.6K—

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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

How do you pronounce Malte?
A machine transcription gives /maltə/ (IPA) for German.
What does the name Malte mean, and where does it come from?
obsolete form of Melde (“saltbush”) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Malte?
In the etymology graph, Malthe is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Malte have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 24 thousand people named Malte in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled malte.
Where is Malte most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Malte is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 891 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
Is Malte a male or female name?
Malte is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
How common is the name Malte?
In Sweden, the national register counted 11,454 people named Malte, about 1 in 891 residents.
How common is Malte compared with other names?
In Germany, Malte is the 448th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Malte?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/malte

The 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, “Malte” — the 448th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Malte parses inside a full name →