Mahal is from the Persian maḥall (محل — palace, place) borrowed from Arabic. A modern American baby name in the broader Persian-Arabic-Mughal heritage aesthetic. Mumtaz Mahal (Arjumand Banu Begum, 1593-1631) was a Mughal empress and chief consort of Emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666). Her regnal title Mumtaz Mahal (ممتاز محل — Exalted One of the Palace) was conferred by Shah Jahan after their 1612 marriage. Niece of Nur Jahan, mother of 14 children — including Emperor Aurangzeb, Dara Shikoh, Jahanara Begum, and Roshanara Begum. Her death at age 38 during childbirth at Burhanpur (June 17, 1631) led Shah Jahan to commission the Taj Mahal mausoleum (1631-1648) in Agra — a Seven Wonders of the World (Modern, 2007) site, UNESCO World Heritage (1983), receiving over 6 million visitors annually. The Taj Mahal means Crown of the Palace.
Featured throughout Mughal heritage and world architecture.
Mahal does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Mahal reduce to 8, The Visionary. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.