Forbes

33,424 people in the United States were counted with the surname Forbes in the 2020 census, making it the 1,032nd most common in the country. That is about one person in 8,943.

By the numbers

People: 33,424
Rank: 1,032nd
How common: 1 in 8,943
Per 100,000: 11.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Scottish Gaelic

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 66.5%
Black, not Hispanic 23.0%
Hispanic or Latino 4.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Forbes

Michelle Forbes (born 1965)American actress
James David Forbes (1809–1868)Scottish physicist and glaciologist
Malcolm Forbes (1919–1990)American publisher
Steve Forbes (born 1947)American businessman and publisher
Bertie Charles Forbes (1880–1954)American financial journalist, founder of Forbes Magazine
Edward Forbes (1815–1854)Manx naturalist
Bryan Forbes (1926–2013)English film director, screenwriter and actor
Kate Forbes (born 1990)Scottish politician

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

Surnames like Forbes

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.