Shohei
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Meaning
soaring peace (Japanese 翔平); famously borne by Shohei Ohtani
The story
Shohei is a Japanese name whose characters can be read as soaring peace, a serene meaning now attached to the most extraordinary baseball player alive. Shohei Ohtani arrived in the major leagues in 2018 doing what no one had truly done since Babe Ruth, pitching and hitting at the highest level at once, and then went further than anyone ever had: multiple Most Valuable Player awards, the first fifty-homer, fifty-steal season in history, and a contract that rewrote the economics of the sport. In American naming records Shohei had simply never appeared, and its first faint mark comes in the 2020s, the very years of Ohtani's ascent. We cannot prove the cause, but no other explanation suggests itself. For now the name remains a true rarity in the United States, a quiet meaning with wings in it, attached to a legend still in mid-flight.
How popular is Shohei around the world?
In the United States, 31 babies were named Shohei between 2020 and 2025.
Shohei is on the official records of the United States.
United States
1 in 700,000
In the United States, 31 babies were named Shohei between 2020 and 2025.
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Shohei has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Montevideo City
last on record 1940
Shohei is not on the 2011 record for Montevideo, whose registry withholds nothing, so the spelling was not given there that year.
The count never rose above 1 in a year, too few to chart.
Births in the department of Montevideo (not all of Uruguay) by first name and year of birth, 1940–2011, from the city’s civil registry, which writes names in capitals, almost always without accents; counted as spelling groups (accent and punctuation variants merged), nothing is withheld at source, and 2012 is excluded as a partial year. Source: Servicio de Registro Civil, Intendencia de Montevideo, Partidas de Registro Civil de Montevideo (Licencia de Datos Abiertos - Uruguay); 2012 dropped as partial
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Keep exploring
The Shohei deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Shohei truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Shohei fits with your family’s names and surname.
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