Farah
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Arabic: joy, happiness, delight. See Bishr .2,; Farhat 2s, happiness
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fɛɹə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Farah is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. In Kuwait it is the 77th most common given name.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 837(inferred from the name graph)
- KWKuwait≈1 in 900
- MAMorocco≈1 in 1.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 381 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 837 (inferred from the name graph)
≈56,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
joy, happiness, delight. See Bishr .2,; Farhat 2s, happiness
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of Muslim Names
How Farah is read(measured from records)
Farah is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English24%
/. river, prov, town, Afghanistan
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Arabic19%
joy, happiness, delight. See Bishr .2,; Farhat 2s, happiness
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
joy, happiness, delight. See Farha i. ,3; Bishr Sau (m.). :
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
happiness, delight
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
- Malay17%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Farah in Malay.
- French13%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Farah in French.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Farah, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Farah counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #901 | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | listed | Farah | 93 |
| EG Egypt | #341 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | listed | Farah | 115 |
| MY Malaysia | #255 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 837 | — | Farah | 85 |
| MA Morocco | #244 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Farah | 65 |
| DZ Algeria | #215 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Farah | 43 |
| SY Syria | #271 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Farah | 32 |
| US United States | — | 10,501 | 1 in 32K | 9.9K | Farah | 381 |
| KW Kuwait | #77 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 900 | — | Farah | 82 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Farah is also recorded in 2 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
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 121 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 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 628 | #2,381 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 164 | — |
Reference works 9
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Farah mean, and where does it come from?
- joy, happiness, delight. See Bishr .2,; Farhat 2s, happiness Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
- 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 are other forms of the name Farah?
- In the etymology graph, Farrah is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Farah?
- A machine transcription gives /fɛɹə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Farah have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 56 thousand people named Farah in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled farah.
- How common is the name Farah?
- In the United States, the national register counted 10,501 people named Farah in 2020, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
- How common is Farah compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Farah is the 901st most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Farah?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/farahThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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 901st most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.