Forrester
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Occupational name, ‘the forester’; first recorded with John le Forester in Berwickshire, 1296
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
Forrester is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GDGrenada1 in 1.4K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 3.7K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 12K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Forrester itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 413 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)
13,878 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Grenada
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)Occupational name, ‘the forester’; first recorded with John le Forester in Berwickshire, 1296.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Scottish Surnames
Where in the world
(measured from records)Forrester 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 | — | 13,878 | 1 in 24K | 14K | Forrester | 413 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | Forrester | 202 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Forrester | 155 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 22K | 1 | Forrester | 144 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Forrester | 3 |
| JM Jamaica | #245 | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 6.7K | — | Forrester | 15 |
| GY Guyana | — | 204 | 1 in 3.7K | 204 | — | 6 |
| GD Grenada | — | 80 | 1 in 1.4K | 80 | — | 2 |
13,878 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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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)Forrester is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, An occupational or topographic surname originating as an occupation for someone who worked or lived in a forest.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)- Tic Forresterb. 1896USAmerican lawyer, veteran and politician (1896-1970)
- Jay Wright Forresterb. 1918USAmerican operations researcher (1918–2016)
- Cay Forresterb. 1921USAmerican actress (1921-2005)
- Maureen Forresterb. 1930CACanadian operatic contralto (1930-2010)
- Rhett Forresterb. 1956USAmerican musician (1956-1994)
- Patrick Forresterb. 1957USUnited States Army officer and NASA astronaut
- Bill Forresterb. 1957USAmerican swimmer, Olympic bronze medalist, world champion, former world record-holder
- Brent Forresterb. 1967USAmerican writer and producer
- Harry Forresterb. 1991GBEnglish association football player
- Anton Forresterb. 1994GBEnglish footballer (born 1994)
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)30 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,596 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,487 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 13K | #2,668 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 204 | #422 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 80 | #146 |
| 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 Forrester mean, and where does it come from?
- Occupational name, ‘the forester’; first recorded with John le Forester in Berwickshire, 1296. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- In which country does Forrester have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Forrester, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled forrester.
- Where is Forrester most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Forrester is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 1.4 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Forrester?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,878 people named Forrester in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Forrester compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Forrester is the 245th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Forrester?
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/forresterThe 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, “Forrester” — the 245th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.