Maher
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Irish Gaelic Ó Meachair, 'descendant of Meachar', meaning literally 'hospitable'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈmɑɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Maher is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Egypt than in any other country, where it is the 30th most common surname.
- EGEgypt≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.7K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.6K
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 Maher 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.
- Egypt (inferred from the name graph)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 444 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈95,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Egypt, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Mehra in IN India, Mera in EC Ecuador and Meher in PK Pakistan.
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)
From Irish Gaelic Ó Meachair, 'descendant of Meachar', meaning literally 'hospitable'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Maher 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EG Egypt | #30 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Maher | 139 |
| PK Pakistan | #409 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | listed | Meher | 48 |
| IN India | #321 | 64,693as Meher | 1 in 20K | 65K | Mehra | 238 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 52,343as Mera | 1 in 323 | 52K | Mera | 4 |
| US United States | — | 23,222 | 1 in 14K | 23K | Maher | 444 |
| AU Australia | #282 | ≈7,100 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | 2 | Maher | 190 |
| IE Ireland | #110 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Maher | 143 |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INEC — civil registry names; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)
Maher is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Irish; Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Meachair ‘descendant of Meachar', a personal name meaning ‘kindly’, ‘fine’, ‘majestic’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
cendant of Meachar , a byname meaning ‘Hospitable’. Maggini see May
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In Swedish, Maher är ett arabiskt namn som betyder ’skicklig’. Namnet används även i Turkiet och Bosnien.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In English, Frank A., US psychologist; Field,
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, John, US drug rehabilitation
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Joseph Maherb. 1933IEIrish actor (1933-1998)
- Bill Maherb. 1956USAmerican stand-up comedian and television host
- Johnny Marrb. 1963GBnot in their usual nameEnglish musician (born 1963)
- Matthew Maherb. 1974USAmerican actor
- Sean Maherb. 1975USAmerican actor
- Katherine Maherb. 1983USchief executive officer and president of National Public Radio
- Ben Maherb. 1983GBBritish equestrian
- Adam Maherb. 1993NLDutch association football player
- Ilona Maherb. 1996USAmerican rugby player
- Kaitlyn Maherb. 2004USAmerican actress
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)
Attested in 81 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 23K | #1,549 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 23K | #1,559 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 23K | #1,456 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 61 | #39,439 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Maher mean, and where does it come from?
- From Irish Gaelic Ó Meachair, 'descendant of Meachar', meaning literally 'hospitable'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Maher?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈmɑɹ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Maher have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 95 thousand people named Maher in Egypt, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled maher.
- How common is the name Maher?
- In the United States, the national register counted 23,222 people named Maher in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Maher compared with other names?
- In Egypt, Maher is the 30th most common surname of 306,210 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Maher?
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/maherThe 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, “Maher” — the 30th most common surname in Egypt. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.