Where the Ferguson name comes from

Ferguson is an anglicized form of the Scots Gaelic "Macfhearghus", a patronymic built on the personal name Fergus. That name joins two Gaelic elements, "fear" meaning man and "gus" meaning vigor or strength, so Fergus reads as "man of vigor." Some poetic readings tie the name to anger or battle fury, though that is not its main etymological sense.

In English the surname took shape as Fergus plus -son, a direct translation of the Gaelic "son of Fergus." It passed from the given name into a surname in Scotland through Clan Fergusson, and it has since spread across the English-speaking world. Fergusson, Furgason, Furgerson and Furgeson all survive as alternative spellings. The 2010 United States Census ranked Ferguson the 188th most common surname in the country, carried by 146,426 people.