> In computer science, manual memory management refers to the usage of manual instructions by the programmer to identify and deallocate unused objects, or garbage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_memory_management

So, you can call it however you like, but calling `malloc()`/`free()` manually (emphasis on the `free()`, since allocation is explicit in most languages in form of `new` or something) is manual memory management, and this is how most programmers use this term.