Scottish Anglicized version of Fearchar, Gaelic "friendly one" or "very dear one".

The variants shown above are the most common ones and represent dialect differences and spelling variations. There were many others in the Middle Ages.

In the 1841 Census of Aberdeenshire, the abbreviation of the forename to Farqu occurs twice as frequently as the full name Farquhar and  Farquharson, as a forename, occurs five times as frequently.  All are comparatively rare.

In old documents in Latin Fercardus, with appropriate case endings, was used for Farquhar.