Humanverse

Forrest

21,977 people in the United States were counted with the surname Forrest in the 2020 census, making it the 1,593rd most common in the country. That is about one person in 13,600.

By the numbers

People
21,977
Rank
1,593rd
How common
1 in 13,600
Per 100,000
7.4

Where the name comes from

Origin Middle English

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.

Who bears the name

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

Notable people called Forrest

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

Surnames like Forrest

Also a first name

Forrest has been given to 54,697 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1994. 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.