Forest is an English nature name that comes from the Old French forest and simply means "forest" or "woodland". The older spelling Forrest, as in Forrest Gump, started as a surname for someone who lived near or worked in a forest, while the single-r form reads as a pure word name. Forest entered the US top 1000 in 2018, peaked at number 704 in 2022 and ranks number 750 in 2025.