Cohen
Masculine · Hebrew roots · “Priest (Hebrew)”
Cohen is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 23,040 boys against 389 girls since 1880.
Cohen is the Hebrew word for priest, and for many centuries it has marked families who trace their line to Aaron. It is one of the most widely carried Jewish surnames in the world, wearing a different coat in each language it settled in — Kohn in Germany, Kogan in Russia, Cahen in France. As a given name in America it is much newer, and it arrives easy to say: two syllables, stress on the first, spelled the way it sounds.
How old is the name Cohen?
Cohen first appears in US birth records in 1912 — 113 years ago. The typical Cohen is a kid of about 8 — this name's wave is very recent. About 22,500 people named Cohen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cohen most popular?
Cohen peaked in 2025, reaching #225 nationally. Today it ranks #225, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From kohen (Hebrew) to Cohen
The story of Cohen
The Hebrew word kohen named the priests who served in the Temple in Jerusalem, a status passed from father to son through the line of Aaron. After the Temple's destruction the designation stayed with the families themselves, marked in synagogue life by the first call to the Torah and by the priestly blessing. When European states began requiring Jewish households to register fixed hereditary surnames, Cohen was already there to be written down, and it hardened into a family name spelled a dozen ways across the continent. It crossed to America with those families as a surname; its use as a first name is a separate and much more recent American habit, part of the broad move of surnames into the given-name column.
Meaning
Priest (Hebrew)
From Hebrew kohen, the term for a priest of the Temple in Jerusalem, and by inheritance for a descendant of Aaron.
How the name formed
- kohenHebrew
- Cohen
- Kohn / Kahn
- Kogan
Related forms: כֹּהֵן (Kohen) · Kohn · Kogan · Cahen · Kahan · Kohen
Pronouncing Cohen
KOH-en
Two syllables, stress on the first. Some speakers sound the h lightly, giving KOH-hen; both are heard and neither is corrected much.
Nicknames for Cohen
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1912
- Most boys named
- 20251,590 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #225reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +7.5%1,590 in 2025, from 1,479
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Cohen in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- כֹּהֵן (Kohen) in Hebrew — transliteration
- Kohn in German — related form
- Kogan in Russian — transliteration
- Cahen in French — spelling variant
- Kahan in Yiddish — related form
- Kohen in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Ohio, Georgia.
Cohens among us
people named Cohen are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,074 born in 2025 was named Cohen
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cohen
- #225
- Cohen on the 2025 chart
- #135
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cohen went to 1,590 boys in 2025, but Kohen is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 2,733, which makes it the 135th most-given boys’ name of the year — 90 places above the chart.
- Cohen1,590
- Kohen1,143
About 1 boy in 625 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 1,074 for Cohen itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Marcos test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cohen's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Marcos climbed just as high around 1996, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Marcos's path sketches the road Cohen is walking now.
Cohen is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Cohen is headed
Cohen should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Cohen beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cohen in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Reads correctly on sight for most English speakers — two syllables, stress in the expected place, no silent letters.
- One dominant spelling, already familiar from its long life as a surname, so it rarely needs to be spelled out.
- A documented record stretching back to biblical Hebrew, with recognizable forms in German, French, Russian and Yiddish.
- Ends in a consonant and pairs cleanly with most surnames and with one- or two-syllable middle names.
- In Jewish tradition Cohen is not a given name at all — it marks priestly descent from Aaron, and carries a specific religious status. Many Jewish families consider its use as a first name by others a real misstep, and you may hear that directly. Worth deciding how you'd answer.
- The wave is very recent, so a boy named Cohen will mostly meet adults who know the word as a surname. That gap tends to close as a generation grows up with it, but it exists now.
- Koen, Kohen and Coen are all in circulation, and Coen is familiar to film audiences. Expect the occasional wrong guess in writing, even though the spoken name gives people no trouble.
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What they receive
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Cohen
Masculine · Hebrew roots · #225 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cohens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 22,500 people named Cohen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Cohen?
- Cohen is the most-used spelling in US records — 1,590 of the 2,733 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Kohen.
- How popular is the name Cohen in 2025?
- Cohen ranks #225 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,590 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cohen?
- About 1 in every 1,074 US boys born in 2025 was named Cohen — 1,590 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cohen with classmates?
- Cohen will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cohen
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kairo#226 · Edward#224 · Callahan#227 · Oscar#223 · Grant#228 · Griffin#222 · Kevin#221 · Brayden#229
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cohen? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cohen and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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