Kohen
Masculine · “Priest”
Kohen is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 8,407 boys against 154 girls since 1880.
Kohen is the Hebrew word for priest, spelled the way scholars transliterate it, and it has been a title in continuous use for some three thousand years. In English it is far better known in its other spelling, Cohen, one of the most widespread Jewish surnames in the world. As a first name it is very new, and the sound of it — two clean syllables, KOH-en, no consonant cluster anywhere — sits comfortably beside the many boys' names ending in that same soft -en.
How old is the name Kohen?
Kohen first appears in US birth records in 1996 — 29 years ago. The typical Kohen is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 8,400 people named Kohen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kohen most popular?
Kohen peaked in 2025, reaching #295 nationally. Today it ranks #295, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From כֹּהֵן (kohen) to Kohen
The story of Kohen
The root is the Hebrew noun kohen, priest — a hereditary office in the Torah, held by the descendants of Aaron. Because the status passed from father to son, it became a family identifier, and when European Jews took fixed surnames it produced Cohen, along with Kohn, Kahn and Cohn, carried in great numbers to the United States by immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kohen with a K matches the standard academic transliteration of the Hebrew, which is why the spelling looks both older and stranger than Cohen. Its life as a boy's given name in America, though, is recent: it arrived in the same wave that made two-syllable surname-style names ending in -en so ordinary.
Meaning
Priest, in Hebrew
The kohanim of the Hebrew Bible were the priestly line descended from Aaron, who served in the Tabernacle and later the Temple. The word is still used in Judaism today for men of that lineage.
How the name formed
- כֹּהֵןkohen
- Cohen
- Kohen
Related forms: כֹּהֵן (Kohen) · Cohen · Kohn · Kahn · Cohn · Kagan
Pronouncing Kohen
KOH-en
Two syllables, stress on the first, the h essentially silent — the same shape as Owen with a K. In Hebrew the stress falls on the second syllable instead: ko-HEN.
Nicknames for Kohen
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
- 1996
- Most boys named
- 20251,143 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #295reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +5.7%1,143 in 2025, from 1,081
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.
Kohen in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- כֹּהֵן (Kohen) in Hebrew — transliteration
- Cohen in English — spelling variant
- Kohn in German/Yiddish — related form
- Kahn in German — related form
- Cohn in English — related form
- Kagan in Russian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Louisiana, Ohio.
Kohens among us
people named Kohen are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,494 born in 2025 was named Kohen
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Kohen
- #295
- Kohen on the 2025 chart
- #135
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Kohen went to 1,143 boys in 2025, but Cohen 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 — 160 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 1,494 for Kohen 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 Lionel test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kohen's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lionel climbed just as high around 1933, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lionel's path sketches the road Kohen is walking now.
Kohen 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 Kohen is headed
Kohen looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 48% 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.
Kohen beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kohen in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Phonetically transparent: anyone who can read Owen or Rowan can say it correctly on first sight.
- Rests on a word with an unbroken three-thousand-year record, which is rare among recently adopted given names.
- Short, two syllables, no sound that English speakers stumble over, and easy across most languages.
- Belongs to a large family of recognizable relatives — Cohen, Kohn, Kahn, Cohn — so the shape is already familiar to most people.
- Kohen is a Jewish priestly title and one of the best-known Jewish surnames. Many Jewish families find it odd or inappropriate as a first name, particularly for a child outside that lineage. Worth thinking through, and worth being ready to answer about.
- The spelling will need saying aloud. Most people default to Cohen, and Koen and Cohen are both in circulation, so expect to correct forms and email addresses.
- Because it reads as a surname, it can sound like a full name reversed when paired with certain last names — try the whole thing out loud a few times.
- The name's wave is very recent, so most bearers are young children; older listeners will likely hear a family name before a first name for a while yet.
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What they receive
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Kohen
Masculine · #295 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kohens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 8,400 people named Kohen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Kohen?
- Kohen is one of 2 recorded spellings. Cohen is the more common one — 1,590 births in 2025 against 1,143 for Kohen.
- How popular is the name Kohen in 2025?
- Kohen ranks #295 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,143 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kohen?
- About 1 in every 1,494 US boys born in 2025 was named Kohen — 1,143 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kohen with classmates?
- Kohen will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kohen
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaleb#295 · Kenneth#294 · Holden#297 · Reid#293 · Jeremy#292 · Sonny#298 · Avery#291 · Preston#299
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kohen? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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