Gohan
Masculine · “cooked rice”
Gohan is the Japanese word for cooked rice, and by extension for a meal — the plainest thing in the language. It is on this list because of an animated series, and the joke in the original naming is that the name is deliberately ordinary.
How old is the name Gohan?
Gohan first appears in US birth records in 2000 — 25 years ago. The typical Gohan is a kid of about 6 — this name's wave is very recent. About 600 people named Gohan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Gohan most popular?
Gohan peaked in 2024, reaching #2444 nationally. Today it ranks #2833, 389 places below that high. See the whole 2024 chart.
Where it comes from
From gohan to Gohan
The story of Gohan
The name reaches American records through a Japanese animated series that became enormously popular worldwide from the nineteen-nineties onward, in which a family of characters is named for foods — rice, vegetables, dairy — as a running joke that most non-Japanese viewers never noticed. Gohan is one of the central figures. Naming a child after a character is an old practice and this is simply its current form; what makes this case unusual is that the underlying word is not a name at all in Japanese, and a Japanese speaker will hear it as a noun.
Meaning
cooked rice; a meal
Japanese gohan is go-, an honorific prefix, with han, cooked rice — so literally 'honorable rice'. It is the everyday word for a meal, and asking whether someone has eaten uses it. The reading is exact. In the series that made the name known, it is a pun on that word, and the family's names are food words throughout.
How the name formed
- gohan
- Gohan
Related forms: ご飯
Pronouncing Gohan
GOH-hahn
Two syllables, stress even between them in Japanese, with the h fully sounded. American English says GO-han with the stress on the first, which is what the series uses in its English dub.
Nicknames for Gohan
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
- 2000
- Most boys named
- 202456 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2444reached in 2024
- Change vs 2024
- −21.4%44 in 2025, from 56
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.
Gohan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- ご飯 in Japanese — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Gohans among us
people named Gohan are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 38,820 born in 2025 was named Gohan
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Davidson test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Gohan's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Davidson climbed just as high around 1994, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Davidson's path sketches the road Gohan is walking now.
Gohan sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Gohan is headed
Gohan looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 23% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium 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.
Gohan beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Gohan in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Five letters, entirely phonetic, and said correctly by English speakers at first sight.
- Two clean syllables that pair easily with almost any surname.
- The word behind it is real Japanese with an exact and documented meaning.
- To a Japanese speaker it is the word for rice, not a name, and will be heard that way.
- The association with the series is total and will arrive before the child does.
- Names taken from a single work date very precisely to the moment that work was popular.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Gohan
Masculine · #2833 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Gohans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Gohan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Gohan in 2025?
- Gohan ranks #2833 among US boy names in 2025, with 44 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Gohan?
- About 1 in every 38,820 US boys born in 2025 was named Gohan — 44 in all.
- Will my child share the name Gohan with classmates?
- Gohan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Gohan
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Bayron#2833 · Odysseus#2833 · Mahlon#2833 · Ward#2833 · Jarvis#2833 · Abriel#2833 · Alain#2833 · Josef#2833
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Gohan? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Gohan and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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