Dagan
Masculine · “grain”
Dagan is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,077 boys against 10 girls since 1880.
Dagan is the name of a god who was misunderstood for two thousand years. He was the grain god of the ancient Near East, the one who made the crops come up, and somewhere in the Middle Ages a scholar looked at his name, saw a Hebrew word for fish inside it, and turned him into a merman. The mistake stuck so hard that Milton put it in Paradise Lost.
How old is the name Dagan?
Dagan first appears in US birth records in 1969 — 56 years ago. The typical Dagan alive today was born around 2003, making them about 22 years old. About 1,000 people named Dagan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Dagan most popular?
Dagan peaked in 2003, reaching #1987 nationally. See the whole 2003 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From a grain god worshipped along the Euphrates to Dagan
The story of Dagan
The Bible tells one story about him that is hard to forget. The Philistines capture the Ark and set it up in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod as a trophy; the next morning the statue of the god is face down on the floor in front of it. They stand him up again. The following morning he is face down again, and this time the head and both hands have broken off on the threshold — so, the writer adds, the priests of Dagon do not tread on that threshold to this day. It is one of the oldest jokes in scripture, and it survives because somebody thought the detail about the doorstep was worth keeping.
Meaning
grain
The Semitic word means grain or corn, and the god who carried it was worshipped along the Euphrates for well over a thousand years before the Philistines took him up. The fish reading comes from a different Hebrew word that looks almost the same, and it was proposed by medieval commentators who had no access to anything older than the Bible. Clay tablets dug up in Syria in the last century settled it: he was a god of agriculture, married to the goddess of the fields, and he had nothing to do with the sea.
How the name formed
- a grain god worshipped along the Euphrates
- taken up by the Philistines on the coast
- medieval commentators misread the name as fish
- clay tablets in Syria correct the record
- used as a modern Hebrew and American name
Related forms: Dagan · Dagon · Dagan
Pronouncing Dagan
DAY-gun
Two syllables, stress at the front, in American use. The Hebrew is dah-GAHN, with the weight at the back and both vowels open, and families keeping the Hebrew form say it that way.
Nicknames for Dagan
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
- 1969
- Most boys named
- 200358 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1987reached in 2003
- Change vs 2023
- −37.5%5 in 2024, from 8
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.
Dagan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Dagan in Hebrew — same name
- Dagon in Biblical Hebrew — spelling variant
- Dagan in Irish — related form
Dagans among us
people named Dagan are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Dagan sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is short, entirely readable and has a genuine ancient meaning behind it.
- It works for a child of either sex, and the record carries it on both sides.
- The connection to grain and harvest is concrete, which most divine names are not.
- The biblical god is a defeated one, and anyone who looks the name up will meet him first.
- It sits close to Dagon, Reagan and Teagan and will be confused with all three.
- The two pronunciations, Hebrew and American, are both in honest use.
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Dagan
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Dagans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Dagan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Dagan in 2025?
- Dagan is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Dagan with classmates?
- Dagan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More D names
The most-given names starting with D, all years combined.
David#35 · Daniel#22 · Donald#690 · Dennis#707 · Douglas#807 · Dylan#41 · Danny#628 · Dale#1409
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Dagan? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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