Gordon
- Pronunciation
- [Gor-don]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Marshes. One Of Scotland's Great Clans. Surname.
- Origin
- Scottish
About the Name Gordon
Gordon is a Scottish surname-turned-given-name derived from a place in the Scottish Borders, whose name comes from the Gaelic or Brittonic for "from the marshes" or marshy ground. The Gordon clan is one of the great Highland families, giving the name deep roots in Scottish history and culture. In English-speaking countries Gordon crossed from clan surname to given name during the nineteenth century, carried partly by admiration for military figures bearing the name and partly by the broader Victorian fashion for using distinguished Scottish surnames as given names.
Four notable bearers are documented. Gordon Brown (born 1951) served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010, after a decade as Chancellor of the Exchequer — born James Gordon Brown. Gordon Ramsay (born 1966) is the British celebrity chef, restaurateur, TV personality, and food writer whose four-decade career has produced one of the most iconic British-American culinary and television bodies of work of the early twenty-first century. Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) was the fifteenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving from 1995 until his death, and was widely credited with modernizing the church's public profile. Gordon Strachan, born 1957, is a Scottish football manager and former midfielder whose playing career with Aberdeen, Manchester United, Leeds United, and the Scotland national team spanned three decades.
Gordon entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1911 and peaked in 1935 at its best rank of #70. It has shown exceptional staying power, appearing as recently as 2023 at #993 with 222 births — over a century of tracked presence. Total top-1000 births reached 78,951. Recorded variants are Gordo and Gordy, informal diminutives.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Gordon
US Popularity History (1911–2023)
Annual US births named Gordon by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1925 with 2,748 boys named Gordon (boy rank #72 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2023, ranked #993 for boys (222 US births). That's 921 places below its 1925 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Gordon Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Gordon the strongest states are Minnesota, Kansas, Utah.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minnesota | #430 | 123 |
| 2 | Kansas | #508 | 20 |
| 3 | Utah | #561 | 54 |
| 4 | Oregon | #578 | 18 |
| 5 | Michigan | #579 | 124 |
| 6 | Iowa | #596 | 15 |
| 7 | Wisconsin | #598 | 65 |
| 8 | Washington | #616 | 52 |
| 9 | Colorado | #643 | 52 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | #667 | 58 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Carolina | #941 | 30 |
| 2 | California | #929 | 120 |
| 3 | Indiana | #908 | 23 |
| 4 | Tennessee | #903 | 18 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #871 | 45 |
| 6 | Ohio | #843 | 29 |
| 7 | Maryland | #838 | 25 |
| 8 | Illinois | #830 | 53 |
| 9 | Virginia | #825 | 70 |
| 10 | Arizona | #800 | 33 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Gordon in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gordy | From The Cornered Hill | Male | Anglo |
Famous People Named Gordon
4 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Gordon.
- Gordon B. Hinckley was a religious leader and the President of ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’.
- Gordon Brown — World Leader (1951)
- Gordon Ramsay — Chef (1966)
- Gordon Strachan is a Scottish football manager and former player.
Looking for names like Gordon?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Gordon to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Gordon against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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