Farah
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Farah is a given name, most frequently recorded in Malaysia. In Kuwait it is the 55th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: joy, happiness, delight.
- KWKuwait1 in 563◐
- JOJordan1 in 2.4K
- SYSyria1 in 2.6K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈24K ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 329 ●
- 1 in 7.0K ◐
across 8 countries
recorded for this name
204K records
Official registry-verified
France
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Фарах in RU Russia, FI Finland.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
joy, happiness, delight. See Bishr .2,; Farhat 2s, happiness
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of Muslim Names
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #200 | 20,041 | 17K rec. | — | — | Farah | 82 |
| SY Syria | #294 | 12,880 | 17K rec. | — | — | Farah | 28 |
| EG Egypt | #418 | 12,730 | 6K rec. | — | listed | Farah | 108 |
| US United States | — | 9,873 | 93K rec. | 1 in 34K | 9.9K | Farah | 329 |
| FR France | — | 9,685△ | 13 rec. | 1 in 7K | 9.7K | — | 4 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 5,962 | 7.6K rec. | — | 3 | Farah | 136 |
| MA Morocco | #298 | 5,478 | 8.1K rec. | — | — | Farah | 61 |
| KW Kuwait | #55 | 4,061 | 2.6K rec. | — | — | Farah | 71 |
| TR Türkiye | — | 3,860 | 5.1K rec. | — | — | Farah | 26 |
| AU Australia | — | 3,809 | 6.9K rec. | — | — | Farah | 125 |
| ES Spain | — | 3,426△ | 1.4K rec. | 1 in 15K | 3.4K | Farah | 64 |
| CA Canada | — | 3,363 | 3.9K rec. | — | 5 | Farah | 128 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English80K19%
- French72K17%
- Arabic61K14%
- Indonesian30K7%
- Malay27K6%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 79,872 | 19% |
| French | 72,070 | 17% |
| Arabic | 61,114 | 14% |
| Indonesian | 30,066 | 7% |
| Malay | 26,829 | 6% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Farah is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
joy; principal place: Maroc, Alexandria, Breves
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Swedish, Farah är ett arabiskt namn som betyder ’glädje’. Det bärs av både kvinnor och män. En känd svensk namnbärare är programledaren Farah Abadi (f. 1988).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Arabic, joy, happiness, delight. See Farha i. ,3; Bishr Sau (m.). :
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
In English, /. river, prov, town, Afghanistan
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Arabic, happiness, delight
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1960 | 19 |
| 1961 | 12 |
| 1962 | 14 |
| 1963 | 13 |
| 1964 | 12 |
| 1965 | 7 |
| 1966 | 13 |
| 1967 | 10 |
| 1968 | 19 |
| 1969 | 30 |
| 1970 | 21 |
| 1971 | 20 |
| 1972 | 36 |
| 1973 | 35 |
| 1974 | 47 |
| 1975 | 78 |
| 1976 | 173 |
| 1977 | 172 |
| 1978 | 66 |
| 1979 | 62 |
| 1980 | 72 |
| 1981 | 79 |
| 1982 | 72 |
| 1983 | 60 |
| 1984 | 83 |
| 1985 | 77 |
| 1986 | 77 |
| 1987 | 92 |
| 1988 | 92 |
| 1989 | 114 |
| 1990 | 92 |
| 1991 | 89 |
| 1992 | 70 |
| 1993 | 101 |
| 1994 | 74 |
| 1995 | 77 |
| 1996 | 85 |
| 1997 | 84 |
| 1998 | 86 |
| 1999 | 105 |
| 2000 | 88 |
| 2001 | 92 |
| 2002 | 130 |
| 2003 | 129 |
| 2004 | 118 |
| 2005 | 111 |
| 2006 | 130 |
| 2007 | 118 |
| 2008 | 140 |
| 2009 | 129 |
| 2010 | 151 |
| 2011 | 164 |
| 2012 | 178 |
| 2013 | 166 |
| 2014 | 152 |
| 2015 | 172 |
| 2016 | 157 |
| 2017 | 143 |
| 2018 | 177 |
| 2019 | 120 |
| 2020 | 153 |
| 2021 | 159 |
| 2022 | 157 |
| 2023 | 173 |
| 2024 | 167 |
| 2025 | 164 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 66 years between 1960–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Farah Antounb. 1874LBOne of the first Syrian Christians to openly argue for secularism and equality regardless of religious affiliation
- Farah Pahlavib. 1938IRqueen/empress consort of Iran from 1959 to 1979
- Farah Karimib. 1960NLDutch politician
- Farah Khanb. 1965INIndian film director and choreographer (born 1965)
- Farah Khan Alib. 1969INgemologist
- Farah Alvinb. 1976USAmerican theatre actress
- Farah Fathb. 1984USAmerican actress
- Farah Abadib. 1988SESwedish television presenter
- Farahb. 1988INIndia actress
- Farah Zeynep Abdullahb. 1989TRTurkish actor and singer (born 1989)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 116 sources across 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 9.9K | #2,381 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 9.7K | #419 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.9K | #4,357 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.7K | #5,203 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.9K | #7,792 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 3.4K | #1,181 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 2.9K | #678 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 2.3K | #456 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 1.8K | #561 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 1.2K | #1,864 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 1K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 942 | #1,707 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 1,037 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Farah?
- We estimate roughly 24 thousand people bear Farah (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
- In which country does Farah have the most bearers?
- Farah is most frequently recorded in Malaysia, where it is most often spelled farah.
- How common is Farah compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Farah is the 200th most common given name of 325,158 given names recorded there.
- Is Farah a male or female name?
- Farah is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Farah mean?
- Recorded meaning: joy, happiness, delight.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/farahThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Farah” — the 200th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.