Originally a Scottish surname, Gordon became a first name during the 19th century. The word believed to be derived from a Brythonic place name meaning ‘spacious fort’.
Gordon is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Gordon isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Gordon ranks 838. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 1 were named Gordon. In the entire USA, approximately 147,462 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Gordon. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.
Originally a Scottish surname, Gordon became a first name during the 19th century. The word believed to be derived from a Brythonic place name meaning ‘spacious fort’.
Gordon was a... well-known first name in the US in the first half of the 20th century.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Gordon is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Gordon for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Gordon is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Gordon is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #69 Gordon easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1935.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Gordon was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 232 babies were named Gordon in the USA in 2022, ranking it at #910 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2010, when it was only ranked #1,000 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 180 boys were named Gordon.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Gordon is one of them. However, Gordon is not equally widespread in all states, but people in North Dakota seem to particularly fancy this name – the 2,126 men called Gordon who live here are 0,373% of all male residents and push their name up to #69 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in North Dakota. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 147,462 people with the name Gordon. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Gordon on position 216 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter G is not really common as a first letter for boys' names: only 2.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with G. By the way, the most common first letters of boys' names are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With six letters, the name Gordon is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that with 2.8% of all boys' names beginning with a G, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are boys' names with G that are quite popular, the most common at present is George.
If your name is Gordon and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Gordon, you can simply say:
Goat
Orange
Rocket
Dinosaur
Orange
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Gordon
Gordon
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
G
O
R
D
O
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
G
O
R
D
O
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Gordon sounds like this:
