Kohl
Masculine · “Cabbage”
Kohl is three things at once in English: a German surname meaning cabbage, the black eye cosmetic that gave English the word alcohol, and a large American department store chain. As a boy's name it belongs to the 2000s and to the Cole family of spellings.
How old is the name Kohl?
Kohl first appears in US birth records in 1982 — 43 years ago. The typical Kohl alive today was born around 2002, making them about 23 years old. About 1,700 people named Kohl are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kohl most popular?
Kohl peaked in 2001, reaching #1327 nationally. Today it ranks #5399, 4,072 places below that high. See the whole 2001 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Cola to Kohl
Our story of Kohl
Respellings usually swap a letter for one that sounds the same. Kohl does something more unusual: it replaces Cole with a spelling that is already a real word in two other languages and a familiar brand in a third. That is a lot of freight for four letters. Helmut Kohl was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and oversaw reunification, which made the surname internationally familiar. Kohl's department stores, founded in Milwaukee by a family of that name, had spread nationally by the 1990s. And kohl the cosmetic has been in English since the eighteenth century. The American given name rises through the 1990s and peaks in 2001, alongside Cole and Kole, and it is impossible to say how much of any of this the families involved had in mind.
Meaningscholars disagree
Cabbage, if the German surname; eye cosmetic, if the Arabic word
German Kohl is the ordinary word for cabbage and a common surname. Arabic kuḥl is the powdered antimony used as an eye cosmetic, and it gave English kohl and, through Latin alchemy, alcohol. As an American given name Kohl functions chiefly as a respelling of Cole, from the Old English byname Cola, connected to charcoal or to a dark complexion. Which of these a family intended cannot be read from the spelling.
How the name formed
- Cola
- Cole
- Kohl
Related forms: Kohl · كحل · Cole
Pronouncing Kohl
KOHL
One syllable, rhyming with coal, identical to Cole. German Kohl is the same sound; the Arabic kuḥl is closer to KOOKHL and is a different word.
Nicknames for Kohl
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
- 1982
- Most boys named
- 200198 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1327reached in 2001
- Change vs 2024
- +70.0%17 in 2025, from 10
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.
Kohl in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kohl in German — related form
- كحل in Arabic — related form
- Cole in English — spelling variant
Kohls among us
people named Kohl are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 100,475 born in 2025 was named Kohl
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 Dietrich test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kohl's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Dietrich climbed just as high around 1972, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Dietrich's path sketches the road Kohl is walking now.
Kohl 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
Kohl beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kohl in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable and four letters, about as compact as a name gets.
- Everyone can say it on first sight.
- It sounds exactly like a familiar and popular name.
- Cole is the standard spelling and will be written for it.
- The department store chain is a strong American association.
- In German the word means cabbage, which bilingual families will notice.
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What they receive
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Kohl
Masculine · #5399 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kohls are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,700 people named Kohl are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kohl in 2025?
- Kohl ranks #5399 among US boy names in 2025, with 17 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kohl?
- About 1 in every 100,475 US boys born in 2025 was named Kohl — 17 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kohl with classmates?
- Kohl will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kohl
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Frazier#5399 · Franz#5399 · Demetrio#5399 · Rolan#5399 · Rayvon#5399 · Riddick#5399 · Laramie#5399 · Soloman#5399
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kohl? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kohl and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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