What's the origin of "Goren"? I tried looking it up once and all I got was "Gorenstein." Is it possible he's of Jewish descent? Is it possible they just made the name up and it's not a real surname?

maybe he's german... I think in unethered in one scene he looks like an angry french men no offense the french. Maybee I've never heard the last name goren before... LOL

NAME ORIGIN: Hebrew (But we all know his name is Robert, which the origin is Germanic)

Goren is a common name and also a surname. There's also a law firm called Goren, Goren & Harris.

Here's what I found:

This is Det. Robert Goren's. And I don't think he is part of Jewish ancestry. The surname is common. Besides, it is only a fictional character:

Goren was born on August 20, 1961 and grew up in the Canarsie neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City near the The Rockaways. A phenomenally bright young man, he took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory his senior year of high school and was sent to speak with the school counselor and school psychiatrist as a result. He played basketball as a youth and was the power forward on his junior varsity basketball team, but quit when he "lost [his] love for the game."

Now, these are Real Life:

Shlomo Goren was an Orthodox Religious Zionist rabbi in Israel who founded and served as the first head of the Military Rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces and subsequently as the third Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel.

This man's name is Goren. He has no surname. He was one of the warriors in Guild Wars Nightfall.

Goren is big. Goren is strong. Goren is really, really good at sprinting into battle. Unfortunately, Goren isn't exactly the sharpest blade in the armory. He understands everyday conversation, and he can carry out simple commands – particularly sentences with the words "hit" and "smash" in them – but the finer philosophical passages of the Flameseeker Prophecies will remain eternally outside his comprehension. Eager for work, Goren has found employment working as the bodyguard of Prince Bokka the Magnificent. Money and influence don't mean much to him, though. Loyalty does.

There are more about 'Goren', but I can't post them all, in case some one wants to post their own

The Carnarsie Neighborhood of Brooklyn, (according to Wikipedia) was predominately Italian/Jewish from the 1920s until the 1980s/90s. Seeing as a lot of people used to meet, marry and stay in the neighborhoods they were born in, it's not a stretch to think that Bobby's parents were both from Carnarsie.

From Answers dot com:

Jewish (Ashkenazic): altered form of Horn 5, under Russian influence; since Russian has no h and alters h in borrowed words to g. In Israel the name has been reinterpreted by folk etymology as being from Hebrew goren 'threshing floor', which is in fact etymologically and semantically unrelated.

Judging from the differences of appearances between Bobby and Frank, I'm guessing that Poppa Goren was of Slavic decent, since Bobby obviously takes after his mother when it comes to his coloring. Frank (and Tony Goldwyn) is paler, with blonder hair and blue eyes.

Whether or not Poppa Goren was Jewish is a tossup, but it wouldn't make Bobby Jewish because that's passed through the mother, not the father.

Actually, knowing how tall Poppa Goren was might settle the debate on the whole Brady/Goren/TodayOnMaury! issue that Bobby has. Frank obviously inherited his mother's height, and Brady wasn't a big man either. If Poppa Goren were a larger man, Bobby might have inherited his height from him. (Of course I'm not figuring grandparents genetic donations, because I inherited my grandmother's height, which makes me the shortest one in the family.)

I know people with the last name Goren and they're of Kurdish/Turkish descent and they're Muslim. So I don't think it's Jewish really or is it and those people moved to Turkey and became Muslim. LOL. It's weird. I would love to know actually.

Hm, all of the "famous" Gorens I've found (besides our detective), have been Jewish. There are Jews in Turkey, so it's quite possible a non-practicing father married into a Kurdish family and that's how the name came into the family. Who knows, maybe he converted? It's not unheard of.

There's also Charles Goren, descended from Russian-Jews, who popularized the game of bridge in the United States.

Shlomo Goren (the Rabbi mentioned by Ingrid), was decended from Polish Jews. The family name was originally Gorenchik.

I wondered of the card game Goren was the origin. That Goren was a lawyer who practice for 13 years, until his success at analyzing and teachin/writing bridge a bridge value/point counting system made him enough money to quit law. I wonder what he was like in his TV appearances.

I don't know,but a young actor which I see on cable series-"Out of pratcie" and "Jack 2000",has the same sername!!

Charles Henry Goren, the bridge analist, was born to Russian/Jewish immigrant parents.
Hey, remember that episode where the father was antisemetic and freaked out when Goren proved his daughter was Jewish? Didn't he accuse the police and Goren implicitely of being Jews? I wondered about that, because I never knew Goren was a potentially Jewish name and wondered how he thought Goren was Jewish. (Although, of course, Jewish people can look all different ways, it was interesting that the daughter "looked Irish" to me--opens my eyes to my own subconscious stereotyping. Like when in "Depths" the investigator said the dead diver looked like a terrorist, and Goren implicitly accussed him of stereotyping).