girls:
1.3k births since 1967
#4399 (23rd percentile)
boys:
72 births since 1976
#4514 (2nd percentile)
overall:
1.4k births since 1967
#6346 (18th percentile)
The name Mali is the #6,346 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 1,397 recorded births since 1967. This represents the 18.0% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 18.0% of all names). For girls, it ranks #4,399 (23.0% percentile) for all time with 1,325 births since 1967. For boys, it ranks #4,514 (1.5% percentile) for all time with 72 births since 1976.
Mali first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1967 (1967 for girls and 1976 for boys). Birth data for Mali is available in 50 out of the 57 years between 1967 and 2023 (50 years for girls and 11 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Mali has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 94.8% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 86.8% of babies named Mali were girls.
For girls, Mali reached its peak popularity in 2019, achieving the 6.3% percentile (ranked #886) with 35 births per million. The name was most common in 2019, with 35 births per million (ranked 6.3% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2018, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Mali is at or near its peak popularity for girls, ranked #893 (5.7% percentile) with 34 births per million.
For boys, Mali reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 0.6% percentile (ranked #924) with 6 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 6 births per million (ranked 0.6% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2020, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Mali ranks #907 for boys (0.4% percentile) with 5 births per million, which is 83.7% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Mali".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Molly. View all variations of Molly.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Mali", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 15 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Molly" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Molly..
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Mali. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 88.1% confident that Mali is pronounced as MAH-lee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is muh-LEE, at 11.9% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Mali? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Mali. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Mali, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like M AA1 L IY0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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