Family name origins & meanings
- Scottish : variant spelling of Mallis.
- Polish (also Malisz, Małys, Małysz), Ukrainian; Czech, Slovak, and Croatian (Mališ); Slovenian; and Lithuanian(also Malys) : from a derivative of a vocabulary word meaning ‘small’. Compare Maly.
- Jewish (from Ukraine) : metronymic, a variant of Malin with the Yiddish possessive suffix -s.