Farah
Feminine · “Joy”
Farah is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 6,278 girls against 98 boys since 1880.
Farah is the Arabic word for joy, used as a given name from Morocco to Malaysia and pronounced almost the same in every one of those places. Two open syllables, no silent letters, nothing to spell twice — and behind it a word that ordinary Arabic speakers use every day, at weddings and in greetings, long before it was ever anyone's name.
How old is the name Farah?
Farah first appears in US birth records in 1960 — 65 years ago. The typical Farah alive today was born around 2005, making them about 20 years old. About 6,200 people named Farah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Farah most popular?
Farah peaked in 1976, reaching #803 nationally. Today it ranks #1348, 545 places below that high. See the whole 1976 chart.
Farah appears on these lists:
Works in Arabic families too:
Where it comes from
From Arabic faraḥ (فَرَح), 'joy' to Farah
The story of Farah
The name is the Arabic common noun faraḥ, joy, pressed into service as a personal name — one of a large family of Arabic names taken straight from words people already knew. With the spread of Arabic as a language of learning and religion, it traveled into Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian, keeping both its sound and its sense. Farah Pahlavi, the last Empress of Iran, crowned in 1967, carried it into the world's newspapers in that spelling. In American English the doubled-r form, Farrah, became the more familiar look through television in the 1970s, which is why the single-r original is now the quieter of the two.
Meaning
Joy, happiness, delight
From the Arabic noun فَرَح (faraḥ), still an everyday word for gladness in Arabic; the same root gives Farhan, Farha and Farhana.
How the name formed
- Arabic faraḥ, 'joy'فَرَح
- Farah
- Farrah
Related forms: فرح · فرح (Farah) · فرح (Farah) · Farah · Farrah · Ferah
Pronouncing Farah
FAH-rah
Two even syllables with a light first a, close to the Arabic. Many American speakers default to FARE-uh, on the pattern of Sarah and the Farrah spelling; both are heard, so it is worth saying which one you mean the first time.
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1960
- Most girls named
- 2012178 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #803reached in 1976
- Change vs 2024
- −1.8%164 in 2025, from 167
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Farah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- فرح in Arabic — transliteration
- فرح (Farah) in Persian — same name
- فرح (Farah) in Urdu — same name
- Farah in Malay / Indonesian — same name
- Farrah in English — spelling variant
- Ferah in Turkish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Texas.
Farahs among us
people named Farah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 9,800 born in 2025 was named Farah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Farah
- #1348
- Farah on the 2025 chart
- #637
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Farah went to 164 girls in 2025, but Farrah, Fara and Pharah are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 344, which makes it the 637th most-given girls’ name of the year — 711 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 4,672 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 9,800 for Farah itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Ether test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Farah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ether climbed just as high around 1900, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ether's path sketches the road Farah is walking now.
Farah sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Farah is headed
Farah should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Farah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Farah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Short, two syllables, and spelled as it sounds — no silent letters and nothing to repeat over the phone except, sometimes, the number of r's.
- Works unchanged in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkish and Malay contexts, which matters in a family that spans more than one of them.
- The meaning is not a scholar's reconstruction: faraḥ is a live, ordinary word for joy that hundreds of millions of people use in conversation.
- Familiar in sound to American ears through the Farrah spelling, while remaining uncommon enough that a child is unlikely to share it in a classroom.
- Two pronunciations circulate in the US — FAH-rah and FARE-uh — and the second tends to arrive uninvited. Expect to correct it gently, or to accept both.
- The doubled-r Farrah is the spelling many Americans picture first, so the single r will occasionally be 'corrected' on forms and in email.
- It is uncommon enough here that most people will meet it for the first time in your child, which means a small explanation now and then — easy, but recurring.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Farah
Feminine · #1348 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Farahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 6,200 people named Farah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Farah?
- Farah is one of 4 recorded spellings. Farrah is the more common one — 168 births in 2025 against 164 for Farah.
- How popular is the name Farah in 2025?
- Farah ranks #1348 among US girl names in 2025, with 164 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Farah?
- About 1 in every 9,800 US girls born in 2025 was named Farah — 164 in all.
- Will my child share the name Farah with classmates?
- Farah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Farah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Gianni#1348 · Ema#1348 · Braylee#1348 · Annabella#1352 · Lillianna#1352 · Devorah#1352 · Hailee#1352 · Lexie#1352
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Farah? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Farah and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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