Malama as a Baby Name. Meaning and Origin of Malama

What is the meaning of the name Malama ?

The baby name Malama is a Unisex name , 3 syllables long and is pronounced mah-LAH-mah (stress on the penultimate syllable).

Malama is Hawaiian in Origin.

A Hawaiian given name, Malama comes from the word mālama, meaning to care for, preserve, protect, or tend, and by extension stewardship, observance, and support. It encapsulates a core Native Hawaiian value found in phrases like mālama ‘āina (care for the land), making the name a quiet pledge of guardianship and compassion. With diacritics, the preferred Hawaiian spelling is Mālama; the macron marks a long first vowel.

Used by Native Hawaiians since the 19th century and revived during the late-20th-century Hawaiian cultural renaissance, Malama is unisex but leans feminine in contemporary use. Spellings vary between Mālama (Hawaiian orthography) and Malama (anglicized). Related lexical forms include Mālamalama ("clarity, enlightenment"), sometimes adopted as a poetic or extended name, though less common. The name’s appeal rests on its clear, compassionate meaning rather than on multiple variants.