Forster

8,627 people in the United States were counted with the surname Forster in the 2020 census, making it the 3,993rd most common in the country. That is about one person in 34,600.

By the numbers

People: 8,627
Rank: 3,993rd
How common: 1 in 34,600
Per 100,000: 2.9

Where the name comes from

Origin an occupational name

As an English surname, from the noun forester.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 87.8%
Black, not Hispanic 3.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Forster

E. M. Forster (1879–1970)English novelist
Georg Forster (1754–1794)German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist, and revolutionary
Robert Forster (1941–2019)American actor
Fraser Forster (born 1988)English association football player
Marc Forster (born 1969)German-Swiss film director
Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–1798)German naturalist
Karlheinz Förster (born 1958)German and French footballer
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (1846–1935)Sister of Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Surnames like Forster

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.