Farquhar
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Gaelic fearchar, perhaps from a Celtic root meaning ‘very dear one’; early reference c.1200 to Malmur Mac Herchar
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈfɑɹkwɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Farquhar is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 123K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 273K
- SESweden1 in 785K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 10 (measured from records)
- 1 in 123K (inferred from the name graph)
2,714 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Reference-verified
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
From Gaelic fearchar, perhaps from a Celtic root meaning ‘very dear one’; early reference c.1200 to Malmur Mac Herchar.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Farquhar 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 2,714 | 1 in 123K | 2.7K | Farquhar | 5 |
| NO Norway | 20 | 1 in 273K | 20 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 18 | 1 in 2.8M | 18 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 13 | 1 in 785K | 13 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 6 | 1 in 978K | 6 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 4 | 1 in 2.1M | 4 | — | — |
2,714 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Farquhar 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.
In English, Gaelic Fearchar, ‘very dear one’; first attested Ferchart c1178 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Scottish surname/name; from Gaelic, meaning uncertain
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, A Scottish surname from Scottish Gaelic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, George. Irish dramatist
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Scottish: Anglicized form of the Gaelic name Fearchar , composed of Old Celtic elements meaning ‘man’ + ‘dear’.
as a word
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)
- George Farquharb. 1677GBIrish dramatist (1677–1707)
- Jane Coldenb. 1724USnot in their usual nameAmerican botanist (1724-1766)
- William Farquharb. 1774GBBritish colonial administrator
- Percival Farquharb. 1865USAmerican businessman (1865–1953)
- Marion Jonesb. 1879USnot in their usual nameAmerican tennis player (1879–1965)
- Kurt Farquharb. 1901USAmerican TV and film score composer
- Robert W. Farquharb. 1932USAmerican astronautical engineer
- Graham Farquharb. 1947AUAustralian biophysicist
- Busdriverb. 1978USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper
- Stuart Farquharb. 1982NZNew Zealand javelin thrower
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 22 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.7K | #11,584 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,956 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,668 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 20 | #42,810 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 18 | #88,854 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 13 | #34,254 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 6 | #53,795 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Farquhar mean, and where does it come from?
- From Gaelic fearchar, perhaps from a Celtic root meaning ‘very dear one’; early reference c.1200 to Malmur Mac Herchar. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Farquhar?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈfɑɹkwɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Farquhar have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.7 thousand people named Farquhar, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled farquhar.
- Where is Farquhar most common?
- Farquhar is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 123 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Farquhar?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,714 people named Farquhar in 2010, about 1 in 123 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Farquhar?
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/farquharThe 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, “Farquhar”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.