Updated February 29, 2024

Table of contents

Find Baby Names

Boy name origins & meanings

  • Old French : Out of the woods

Boy name variations

Forest

Forest

+ 4% this year
Masculine
Rare
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Forestt

Forestt

0 % this year
Masculine
Rare
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Forrestt

Forrestt

0 % this year
Masculine
Rare
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Forrester

Forrester

0 % this year
Masculine
Rare
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Forster

Forster

0 % this year
Masculine
Rare
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Foryst

Foryst

0 % this year
Masculine
Rare
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How Popular Is The Name Forrest

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : topographic name for someone who lived in or near a royal forest, or a metonymic occupational name for a keeper or worker in one. Middle English forest was not, as today, a near-synonym of wood, but referred specifically to a large area of woodland reserved by law for the purposes of hunting by the king and his nobles. The same applied to the European cognates, both Germanic and Romance. The English word is from Old French forest, Late Latin forestis (silva). This is generally taken to be a derivative of foris ‘outside’; the reference was probably to woods lying outside a habitation. On the other hand, Middle High German for(e)st has been held to be a derivative of Old High German foraha ‘fir’ (see Forster), with the addition of a collective suffix.