Variant of Mallory, from a French surname meaning unfortunate or ill-fated.
Mallori is a variant of Mallory, a surname of Old French origin derived from *malheureux* — the unfortunate one, the unlucky. It is a name with one of the more paradoxical etymologies in the English-speaking world: parents choose it for its sound and feel, generally unaware that they are bestowing upon their child a name that once marked ill fortune. In medieval France, such surname-meanings were descriptive rather than prescriptive, likely applied to a family that had suffered a notable calamity, and through generations of use the word's sting faded entirely.
The name's most celebrated historical bearer is George Herbert Leigh Mallory, the British mountaineer who perished on Mount Everest in 1924 in circumstances that remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of exploration — whether he and his partner Andrew Irvine reached the summit before dying has never been definitively answered. Mallory's famous response when asked why he wanted to climb Everest — "Because it's there" — became one of the most quoted lines in the English language, transforming his name into a byword for magnificent, reckless ambition. Mallory entered the American feminine name charts in earnest in the 1980s, propelled in part by the character Mallory Keaton on the television series *Family Ties*.
The spelling Mallori, with the -i ending, emerged as a soft feminization and has remained a consistent variant. Today, parents choosing Mallori often do so for its preppy, slightly literary feel — a name that sounds like someone who grew up on a windswept coast and reads well.