Kagan
Masculine · “great khan”
Kagan is given to both — 651 boys and 73 girls since 1880. See other names given to both
Kagan is three different things wearing the same five letters. In Turkish it is a title — the rank above khan, the great khan, the one all the others answer to. In Jewish family names across Eastern Europe it is Cohen, respelled by languages that had no h to work with. And in America it is simply a surname that sounded like a first name. All three are real.
How old is the name Kagan?
Kagan first appears in US birth records in 1978 — 47 years ago. The typical Kagan alive today was born around 2005, making them about 20 years old. About 600 people named Kagan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kagan most popular?
Kagan peaked in 2001, reaching #2618 nationally. Today it ranks #12008, 9,390 places below that high. See the whole 2001 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From kağan to Kagan
The story of Kagan
The title came first: kağan is attested across Central Asia for more than a thousand years, from the Turkic khaganates to the Mongol empire, and it survives in modern Turkish as a men's given name of real standing. The surname is a separate story entirely — Jewish families named Kohen who passed through Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian record-keeping came out as Kagan, and carried that spelling to America. Once both were present in the United States, the ordinary American habit of moving surnames to the front did the rest. That is why the name reads as new here despite being ancient twice over.
Meaningscholars disagree
great khan, or priest
Two unrelated sources give two clean meanings. The Turkic kağan is the imperial title, the ruler over subordinate khans, used across the steppe from the Rouran and Göktürk empires onward. The Ashkenazi surname Kagan is Kohen — the Hebrew word for a priest — passed through Slavic languages that lack the h sound and substitute a g. Nothing about the American spelling indicates which line a particular family belongs to.
How the name formed
- kağan
- Kagan
Related forms: Kağan · Khagan · Kohen
Pronouncing Kagan
KAY-gun
In American English, two syllables with the stress on the first and a long a. Turkish says kah-AHN, because the ğ between vowels is not a consonant at all but a lengthening of the sound before it. The two are far enough apart to be different names in practice.
Nicknames for Kagan
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
- 1978
- Most boys named
- 200136 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2618reached in 2001
- Change vs 2023
- −28.6%5 in 2025, from 7
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.
Kagan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kağan in Turkish — same name
- Khagan in Mongolian — transliteration
- Kohen in Hebrew — related form
Kagans among us
people named Kagan are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 341,615 born in 2025 was named Kagan
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 Deryck test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kagan's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Deryck climbed just as high around 1965, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Deryck's path sketches the road Kagan is walking now.
Kagan 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
Kagan beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kagan in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It fits the current American taste for surnames as first names while having genuine depth behind it.
- Five letters, two syllables, and no spelling difficulty for an English reader.
- Two entirely separate and respectable histories stand behind it, which is unusual and worth telling.
- It is a well-known American surname, so it will be read as a last name on first sight.
- The Turkish saying and the American one share almost nothing, which matters if the family has Turkish relatives.
- It rhymes closely with Keegan, Reagan and Teagan, and will be misheard as all three.
- Nearly every child given this spelling is a boy, though the ending is one American ears also read as feminine.
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Kagan
Masculine · #12008 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kagans 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 Kagan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kagan in 2025?
- Kagan ranks #12008 among US boy names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kagan?
- About 1 in every 341,615 US boys born in 2025 was named Kagan — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kagan with classmates?
- Kagan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kagan
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Garfield#12008 · Chas#12008 · Lew#12008 · Barney#12008 · Dewitt#12008 · Granville#12008 · Cicero#12008 · Willam#12008
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kagan? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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