Forrest
Forrest reached its high-water mark in 1994 at number 217, and has been recorded 54,697 times in all. Its origin is given as a surname. In 2025 it ranked 374th. About 31,000 Forrests are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 34.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Forrest boys named Forrest
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 54,697
- Estimated living today
- 31,000
- Median age today
- 34
- Peak year
- 1994
- Best rank
- 217th
- Rank in 2025
- 374th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,058 / 53,639
How old the living Forrests are
born that year still alive today
Of the 54,697 babies given the name since 1880, about 31,000 are alive — 57 in every hundred. Roughly 8,300 of them are children and 6,300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1991 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
English surname, from the noun forest. Also adopted and translated from the word for "forest" in various other languages by settlers.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Forrests
- Forrest Smithson (1884–1962)athletics competitor
- Forrest J Ackerman (1916–2008)American collector of science fiction books and movie memorabilia
- Forrest Towns (1914–1991)American hurdler
- Forrest Griffin (born 1979)American mixed martial artist
- Forrest Tucker (1919–1986)American actor
- Forrest Goodluck (born 1998)American actor
- Forrest Li (born 1975)Singaporean businessman
- Forrest Stanley (1889–1969)American actor
People named Forrest with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Forrest is most common
Across the country Forrest is recorded 14.1 times per 100,000 births, so these are the states above that line. Only states with 50 or more recorded Forrests are ranked here: below that a handful of births makes a rate that moves on chance alone.
Counts favour the big states, which is why the same few lead this list for almost every name.
Births recorded in each state since 1910. A name given to fewer than five babies in one state in one year is not published, so a name's quietest states are missing from this rather than showing zero. Browse names by state.
Names of 1994
The most popular boys’ names the year Forrest peaked:
Forrest elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Forrest | 726 | 474th |
| Scotland boys | Forrest | 41 | 464th |
| England and Wales girls | Forrest | 27 | 3,519th |
| France boys | Forrest | 15 | 5,471st |
| Ireland boys | Forrest | 3 | 764th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Forrest | 3 | 392nd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Forrest against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.