Gorden
Masculine
One family put this name on a dog breed and a regiment in the same generation. A duke of Gordon raised a Highland regiment in the seventeen-nineties and the same house developed a black-and-tan gundog on the estate, and both are still called by the family name two centuries later.
How old is the name Gorden?
Gorden first appears in US birth records in 1886 — 139 years ago. The typical Gorden alive today was born around 1934, making them about 91 years old. About 600 people named Gorden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Gorden most popular?
Gorden peaked in 1922, reaching #722 nationally. See the whole 1922 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Gordon to Gorden
The story of Gorden
The name is also attached to the worst week of disorder London has ever had. In seventeen eighty a nobleman called Gordon led a march to Parliament against a bill easing restrictions on Catholics, the crowd got away from him, and for six days the city burned: prisons broken open, distilleries drained and set alight, hundreds shot dead in the streets by troops. Dickens wrote a novel about it. The man who gave the riots his name was tried for treason and acquitted, converted to Judaism a few years afterwards, and died in Newgate — a prison that the crowd carrying his name had burned down and which had been rebuilt since.
Meaningscholars disagree
from a place in the Scottish borders
The village that supplies the surname is in Berwickshire and its own name is not securely explained; proposals involve a hill and involve a fort, and neither is settled. What is clear is that the family took the name from the land.
How the name formed
- Gordon
- Gorden
Pronouncing Gorden
GOR-den
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The second is unstressed to the point of disappearing, which is exactly why the vowel in it is spelled two ways.
Nicknames for Gorden
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1886
- Most boys named
- 192282 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #722reached in 1922
- Change vs 2007
- 0.0%5 in 2019, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Gordens among us
people named Gorden are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Gorden sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Gordy is a ready short form with an entirely different warmth.
- The sound is settled even where the spelling is not.
- It belongs to the surname-name tradition without being a common example.
- Gordon is the standard spelling and this will be corrected for life.
- The generation that used it in America is now very old.
- The changed vowel is inaudible, so the effort is spent on paper alone.
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Gorden
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Gordens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Gorden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Gorden in 2025?
- Gorden is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Gorden with classmates?
- Gorden will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More G names
The most-given names starting with G, all years combined.
George#126 · Gary#1073 · Gregory#593 · Gerald#1204 · Gabriel#37 · Glenn#1443 · Gavin#303 · Gordon#1051
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Gorden? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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