Character · Dragon Ball
Son Gohan
Named after a bowl of rice, raised in part by his father's old enemy, and quietly better at studying than fighting.
In Otakana the clue reads: Scholar son who surpasses his father when angry
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dragon Ball
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Gohan is introduced as a four-year-old in a hat, being tutored towards a scholarly career by a mother who has no interest in raising another martial artist. Within a day of meeting his uncle he is kidnapped, and within a week Piccolo has dumped him in the wilderness for a year to see whether he survives. He does. The pattern holds for the rest of the series: Gohan is pulled into fights he did not want and turns out to be terrifying in them.
The power sits behind his temper. Where his father trains up towards a ceiling, Gohan skips levels when something he cares about gets hurt, which makes him the least predictable fighter in the cast and the one the plot saves for emergencies. As an adult he does what he always said he would: he becomes an academic, marries Videl, and fights a crime wave in a costume so embarrassing his own family will not discuss it.
His name is gohan, cooked rice, and by extension a meal. He is called after his father's adoptive grandfather, so the joke doubles as family history. It also sets a rule the next generation follows, since his brother Goten and every Saiyan around them carry food or vegetable names.
Spelling GOHAN
GOHAN is the given name and five letters, so Son is not wanted here. There is nothing trimmed or swapped: 悟飯 is go-han, two clean syllables, and the English spelling matches them beat for beat. The word means cooked rice in ordinary Japanese, which is a handy memory hook, and it shares its first two letters with his father and his brother.