The history of your name

The FORBES surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 32,228 986 0.012 120
United States (1880 census) 7,737 774 0.015 155
Change since 1880 +24491 -212 -0.003 -35
Other Countries
Australia 4,083 364 0.025 250
United Kingdom 12,139 482 0.026 264
Top States for FORBES by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Florida 2,911 665 0.018 182
California 2,468 1313 0.007 73
New York 2,441 677 0.013 129
North Carolina 1,649 706 0.020 205
Texas 1,560 1566 0.007 75
Top States for FORBES by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Vermont 157 607 0.026 258
New Hampshire 276 678 0.022 223
North Carolina 1,649 706 0.020 205
Delaware 154 869 0.020 197
Virginia 1,391 607 0.020 197

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called FORBES live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called FORBES represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called FORBES in Florida than any other state, but you are more likely to find a FORBES by picking someone at random in Vermont than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of FORBES

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the FORBES surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the FORBES surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of FORBES in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 799 2.48
Mixed Race 609 1.89
Asian/Pacific 193 0.6
Native American/Alaskan 171 0.53
White (Caucasian) 23,926 74.24
Black/African American 6,529 20.26

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the FORBES surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of FORBES in historical publications

(origin: Local) Lands free from military service, called Saor Forba, or free lands. The name of a parish in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.


FORBES. A town and barony in Aberdeenshire. The family jiossessedthat lordship as early as temp. AVilliam the Lion,

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to FORBES

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as FORBES.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for FORBES

The following words are slight variants of FORBES that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.