Farah
Farah is a girl's name that peaked in 2012, when it was the 1,322nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,348th. About 6,300 Farahs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Farah boys named Farah
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 6,376
- Estimated living today
- 6,300
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 2012
- Best rank
- 1,322nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,348th
- First recorded
- 1960
- Girls / boys
- 6,278 / 98
How old the living Farahs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 6,376 babies given the name since 1960, about 6,300 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 2,800 of them are children and 16 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Arabic
Borrowed from Arabic فَرَح (“joy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Farahs
- Farah Pahlavi (born 1938)queen/empress consort of Iran from 1959 to 1979
- Farah Khan (born 1965)Indian film director and choreographer
- Farah Zeynep Abdullah (born 1989)Turkish actor and singer
- Farah (born 1988)India actress
People named Farah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Farah is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Farah is most concentrated in Florida (3.5×), New York (2.8×), New Jersey (2.1×), California (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2012
The most popular girls’ names the year Farah peaked:
Farah elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Farah | 9,800 | 158th |
| England and Wales girls | Farah | 1,813 | 483rd |
| Belgium girls | Farah | 1,453 | 130th |
| Italy girls | Farah | 685 | — |
| Norway girls | Farah | 210 | 390th |
| Scotland girls | Farah | 166 | 397th |
| Ireland girls | Farah | 116 | 353rd |
| Switzerland girls | Farah | 108 | 574th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Farah | 91 | 195th |
| France boys | Farah | 60 | 5,721st |
| England and Wales boys | Farah | 26 | 2,425th |
| Poland girls | Farah | 5 birth registrations | 594th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Farah: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Farah | 54 | 0.004% | 614th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Farah | 53 | 0.012% | 337th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Farah | 1 | 0.002% | 200th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Farah is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.03% of children were given it – 26 of them.
Farah: rank by region
In 2025, Farah was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Farah | 370 | 14 |
In 2007, Farah was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melilla | Farah | 7 | 7 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Farah appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (326th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Farah by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 8 | 425th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Farah among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Farah | 94 | 198 |
| Finland boys | Farah | 22 | 105 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Farah lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 3,426 women called Farah were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melilla | Farah | 268 | 6.190 | 16 |
| Ceuta | Farah | 107 | 2.583 | 90 |
| Girona | Farah | 166 | 0.401 | 322 |
| Tarragona | Farah | 168 | 0.384 | 328 |
| Almería | Farah | 128 | 0.339 | 347 |
| Murcia | Farah | 223 | 0.282 | 352 |
Listed in 48 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 4 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Farah against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.