Goku's Real Name Isn't Sun Wukong: Debunking Screen Rant's Claim That Fans Don't Know It

Screen Rant ran an article titled "Even Dragon Ball Fans Don't Know Goku's Real Name (And It's Not Kakarot)," and its claim that his real name is Sun Wukong doesn't hold up. Sun Wukong is the Chinese name of the Journey to the West character Goku is based on, Son Goku is simply how that name reads in Japanese, and within Dragon Ball itself, Goku's real birth name is Kakarot.

Just when you thought it was safe to check Screen Rant, no, I'm kidding, "it's never safe to check them." This was another one I'd call interesting, and by interesting I mean pretty foolish, so I want to lay out exactly what the article got wrong and why.

Screen Rant's headline promised a Goku name most Dragon Ball fans supposedly didn't know

When this article was sent to me, my first thought was that it sounded interesting, so I went and read it. Screen Rant has had a reputation for years of putting out garbage articles, and it's one of many websites that do it. Most of the time, the people writing these pieces either don't do enough research, don't care to do any, aren't real fans, or are fans with very surface level knowledge.

There's nothing wrong with being a casual fan. I've said that a million times. The problem is when you write an article and put out bad information that's going to confuse people or make you look foolish, and this is one of those articles.

Here's the basic history. From the very beginning of Dragon Ball, his name was Son Goku. Then, at the start of Dragon Ball Z, we found out from his older brother that his real name is Kakarot, or Kakarotto in the Japanese, which is a pun on carrot.

Toriyama's early monkey boy draft of Goku is real, but it isn't about his name

I'll spare you most of the details, because these articles all follow the same pattern. They open with a little paragraph introducing the character, then they get into where the idea came from. In this case, the writer went into Toriyama's original draft for Dragon Ball, something I've covered before when I went through Toriyama's writing process on his way to finishing Dragon Ball back in 84.

Long story short, and this is something most Dragon Ball fans already know, Son Goku is based on a character from Journey to the West known as Sun Wukong. A lot of Journey to the West ended up in Dragon Ball, not just Sun Wukong and some of the other characters but plenty of other aspects too. Characters like Broly and Gohan, and the Universe 6 Saiyans, all borrow from the original Saiyuki, Journey to the West, and that includes Goku.

The article also showed one of the early drafts of Goku, and that part is accurate. At one point, when Toriyama was first coming up with Dragon Ball, he did consider making Goku a legitimate monkey boy like Sun Wukong. That's fine. If the article had been titled something like Goku's original form, or this is what Goku was supposed to look like, maybe it would have been more accurate. But that's not what it said. It said fans don't know Goku's real name and that it isn't Kakarot.

Sun Wukong is the Chinese name, and Son Goku is the same name in Japanese

You can skim most of the article, since I'd already read through all of it. What it basically argues is that Son Goku's real name is Sun Wukong. The problem is that Sun Wukong is how you say that character's name in Chinese, because Journey to the West is a Chinese folk story. Take a guess at what his name is in Japanese. It's Son Goku.

Sun Wukong is not Goku's real name. Son Goku is a translation of Sun Wukong. Before there was ever a Dragon Ball, the Japanese referred to Sun Wukong as Son Goku, because that's the translation of his name.

The article also talked about the meaning behind the name Wukong, about enlightenment and the emptiness of the void. All of that's true. That information isn't wrong. What's wrong is the clickbait framing that says Dragon Ball fans don't know Goku's real name, but the writer does. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Obviously the writer picked this up from something I put out, or something one of the few others who cover Journey to the West in relation to Dragon Ball put out, or maybe somebody else. There aren't that many of us doing it, which is exactly why I decided to start covering it.

Goku in Dragon Ball is based on Sun Wukong but isn't the same character

Goku in Dragon Ball, although he's based on Sun Wukong, isn't the same character. Not even close. In Journey to the West, Sun Wukong was actually a bad guy at first, and Journey to the West isn't really about him. He's just a character in the story.

Goku went through a path similar to Wukong's in some instances, but his story is completely different. Wukong didn't fight the same people Goku fought. Saiyans don't exist in Journey to the West. There are tons of characters in Dragon Ball who aren't in Journey to the West at all. It's just mind blowing.

Goku is based on Wukong, but his name is not Wukong. He's Son Goku.

The Chinese version, the English dub and almost every translation still call him Goku

Sun Wukong is just the Chinese original name for the character known as Son Goku in Journey to the West. And in the Chinese version of Dragon Ball, Goku isn't named Sun Wukong. He's named Son Goku, the same way the English dub didn't rename him something else. He's Goku.

There was an early English dub that called him Zero. That was the Harmony Gold dub. In all subsequent dubs, though, his name has been Goku. In fact, almost every language that translates this character uses the name Goku, not Wukong, because Goku and Wukong aren't the same character.

The writer even gives himself away in his own description, where he explains that Son Goku's name is derived from the Japanese translation of the Chinese characters that make up the name Sun Wukong, the hero of Journey to the West. Okay. Most Dragon Ball fans do know that. He was basically trying to be clever, then tried to turn it into clickbait by calling it Goku's real name.

Kakarot is Goku's real birth name, point blank

Son Goku's real name in the world of Dragon Ball is Kakarot. That's his real name, point blank. That's his birth name. He was named Son Goku by the grandfather who found him, Son Gohan. As I see it, "that's elementary dragon ball knowledge."

But like always, Screen Rant has to find ways to clickbait people and fool gullible readers. Now some of them are going to tell their friends they've got a little tidbit nobody else knows: Goku's real name is Wukong, they read it on Screen Rant. That's how misinformation gets spread around when it isn't true.

It shouldn't surprise anyone, though. It's Screen Rant. I haven't read their other articles, and I'm sure some readers could debunk a lot of them, but when it comes to Dragon Ball, they struck out yet again.

Which name do you think of first when it comes to Goku: Son Goku or Kakarot?