Farah

Farah is the 4,357th most common surname in the United States, shared by 7,867 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 38,000.

By the numbers

People: 7,867
Rank: 4,357th
How common: 1 in 38,000
Per 100,000: 2.6

Where the name comes from

Origin Arabic

Borrowed from Arabic فَرَح (“joy”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Farah described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Black, not Hispanic 57.3%
White, not Hispanic 34.9%
Hispanic or Latino 4.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called Farah

Mo Farah (born 1983)British track and field athlete
Nuruddin Farah (born 1945)Somali writer
Robert Farah (born 1987)Colombian tennis player
Farah (born 1988)India actress
Hassan Abshir Farah (1945–2020)former Prime Minister of Somalia (died: 2020)

People named Farah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Farah

Also a first name

Farah has been given to 6,376 American babies as a first name since 1960, peaking in 2012. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.