Maher

At the 2020 census, 22,504 Americans bore the surname Maher — 1,559th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 13,300.

By the numbers

People: 22,504
Rank: 1,559th
How common: 1 in 13,300
Per 100,000: 7.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

Reduced Anglicized form of Irish Ó Meachair (“descendant of Meachar”), a personal name meaning "fine", "majestic".

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 91.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.4%
Black, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Maher

Bill Maher (born 1956)American stand-up comedian and television host
Kaitlyn Maher (born 2004)American actress
Adam Maher (born 1993)Dutch association football player
Sean Maher (born 1975)American actor
Ben Maher (born 1983)British equestrian
Ilona Maher (born 1996)American rugby player
Amal Maher (born 1985)Egyptian singer and actress
Allan Maher (born 1950)Australian soccer player

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

Surnames like Maher

Also a first name

Maher has been given to 1,156 American babies as a first name since 1963, peaking in 2025. 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.