Sri Anupama Mallika began life with a plainer name: Sri Vallabha. Chaitanya-charitamrita traces the family back several generations to a Karnataka-brahmana line that eventually settled in Bengal, but the part of the story that shapes his own life starts with his father, Kumaradeva, who made his home in Bakla-Chandradvipa, near what is now Fateyabad in the Jessore district of Bangladesh. Of Kumaradeva's several sons, three took up Vaishnava life: Sanatana, the eldest; Rupa, the middle brother; and Vallabha, the youngest. Later the three brothers moved from Chandradvipa to a village in the Maldah district of Bengal called Ramakeli - the village where, in time, Srila Jiva Goswami would be born.
All three brothers entered government service under Nawab Hussain Shah, the Muslim ruler of Gauda. Sanatana rose to a senior ministerial post remembered in Chaitanya-charitamrita as Sakara Mallika. Rupa became Dabir Khas, the ruler's chief secretary, entrusted with drafting the Sultanate's official correspondence. Vallabha, the youngest, is remembered by tradition - recorded in the Bhaktiratnakara - as having been placed in charge of the royal mint. It was demanding, prestigious work, and it placed all three brothers inside the same Muslim court whose politics and patronage shaped so much of sixteenth-century Bengal.
Because the three brothers served the Sultanate's government in this way, the family as a whole received an honorific title: Mullik, also written Mallika or Malik. Srila Prabhupada explains the title at length in his purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita, noting that it functioned much like the English title "lord" - given to families of wealth and standing who held close connections with the ruling government, regardless of caste or religion. He even mentions his own family's long-standing connection to another branch of Mulliks in Calcutta, underlining that the title was never restricted to one lineage. This detail matters here because it is easy to read "Mallika" as though it were a personal name unique to one man, perhaps even mistake it for something else entirely - a different name, a different person. It was neither. It was a shared family honorific that Sanatana, Rupa and Vallabha all carried for the same reason, at the same time, in the same court.
What turns "Mallika" into part of one particular man's own name is a specific meeting. Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita records that when Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu passed through Ramakeli on His way toward Vrindavana, He stopped in the village and met Vallabha there directly, alongside his brothers. The main narrative introduces the result of that meeting a little later, as Rupa and his brother set out to find the Lord again at Prayaga: "Rupa Gosvami's younger brother was a great devotee whose actual name was Sri Vallabha, but he was given the name Anupama Mallika" (CC Madhya 19.36). From that point forward, the text refers to him only by this new name - not simply "Anupama," but "Anupama Mallika" together, as though Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself had decided the family title belonged permanently beside it.
The three brothers did not remain together in government service for long after this. Sanatana Goswami was the first to break free, through an escape from imprisonment that has become one of the best-known episodes in Gaudiya Vaishnava history. Rupa followed soon after, resigning his own post outright, and when he set out to find Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Vallabha - by then known as Anupama Mallika - chose to travel with him rather than stay behind in Gauda. What that journey held for him, and how briefly it lasted, is told on The Journey to Vrindavana and a Sudden End.