Today’s choice is one so versatile that we’re amazed more parents haven’t discovered it.

Thanks to Lola for suggesting our Name of the Day: Malcolm.

Malcolm is as Scottish as tartan.  It comes from Mael Colium, literally, follower of St. Columba.  Columba is credited with converting Scotland to Christianity and has also been translated as Colm and the UK chart-topping Callum.  

But Malcolm has moved well beyond a Scottish heritage choice.  Choose your category, and we can find a notable bearer:

• Four kings of Scotland wore the name between 943 and 1165;
• Of the four rulers, the real life Malcolm III inspired events in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, lending the name some literary style;
• Controversial civil rights leader Malcolm X gives the name considerable weight as an African-American heritage choice;
• Malcolm McLaren was the nearly as controversial mastermind and manager of punk band the Sex Pistols, giving the name a rebellious vibe;
• Malcolm Young co-founded the Australian rock band AC/DC with his brother Angus, though he’s put aside his schoolboy uniform;
• Malcolm Forbes built up the magazine he inherited from his father, the modestly titled Forbes, lending Malcolm a certain conservative Wall Street tone;
• Malcolm Gladwell is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tipping Point and one of the best known writers in the social sciences today;
• Actor Malcolm McDowell has appeared in movies from Stanely Kubrick’s 1971 A Clockwork Orange to 1994′s Star Trek Generations, where he kills Captain Kirk.  He continues to work playing an assortment of controversial characters;
• On a lighter note, Frankie Muniz played the title character on Malcolm in the Middle, the popular early 2000s Fox comedy, making the name almost cuddly;
• Sci-fi aficionados might think of Serenity captain Malcolm Reynolds on the cult classic Firefly.

If lumping together kings and activists with fictional characters and music notables seems a bit disrespectful, we can only counter that this is exactly what we love about Malcolm.  We can all name famous people with the name, but he’s not pigeon-holed by any of them.

For we mere mortals, Malcolm has remained a name never popular, but never out of use.  He ranked #565 in 2007.  While he was most popular from the 1920s to the 1940s, Malcolm has never cracked the Top 200 in the US.

If Callum is hot, Malcolm is brainy.  He pairs with Simon and Henry, while Callum feels more like a successor to Connor and Ryan.  And while he’s not a saint, odds are that his tie to Saint Columba would satisfy even the most Catholic parents’ desire for a faith-appropriate name.

While some balk at the negative associations of the nickname Mal – think malevolent – we think it’s a minor objection.  Malcolm manages to be a little bit of everything.  He’s brainy, heroic, courageous and rebellious.  And while everyone recognizes the name, it would be shared by few.

We’d love to meet a Malcolm.