Holiday Calendar

National Gordon Day

Next celebratedTuesday, June 29, 2027

Everyone assumes the name spread after General Gordon died at Khartoum, but American records say otherwise: Stanley, Kenneth and Leslie all rose faster over the same five years. June 29 marks a name whose big story fails checking.

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJune 29
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A name day nobody has ever claimed.

No documented founder or formal establishment record has been identified for National Gordon Day. The observance circulates online with a June 29 date, and no source gives a reason for that date.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

Scotland ranked Gordon thirtieth after England and Wales stopped listing it

In 1974 Gordon was the 30th most popular name for a baby boy in Scotland. In England and Wales it was not in the top 100 at all. National Gordon Day, on June 29, belongs to everyone who carries it.

The gap was not small. Scottish registrars wrote the name down 369 times that year, and the Office for National Statistics has not listed Gordon in any of its ten-yearly columns from 1974 onward.

The day itself has no such paper trail. What circulates in place of one is a confident, widely repeated founding story that no register, archive or official record supports.

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ORIGINS

Gordon Day history

INTRODUCTION

Names usually rise and fall in roughly the same way wherever a language is spoken. Gordon did not. Two neighbouring registers put it in completely different places in the same year.

Nobody has established why. What can be established is where the name came from, when each country took it up, and which of the popular explanations for it survive checking.

CHAPTER 01

A village, then a family

Gordon is a small village in the Merse district of Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders. The historical gazetteer puts it 500 feet above sea level.

That parish was the original seat of the Gordons "from the 12th till early in the 14th century", the ancestors of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon and of the Marquis of Huntly. Its old church, St Michael's, was handed from the monks of Coldingham to those of Kelso in 1171.

The order runs place, then surname, then given name. Behind the Name traces it to a Scottish surname taken from that Berwickshire place, built from Brythonic elements meaning "spacious fort".

CHAPTER 02

The century it spent climbing

As a first name, Gordon rose steadily and slowly. The Office for National Statistics publishes England and Wales rankings at ten-year intervals. Gordon climbs through every early column, from 82nd in 1904 to 39th in 1924.

Its best showing in that series is 1934, at 21st. That is the highest of the thirteen ten-yearly snapshots ONS publishes, not a measured peak year, because the series skips the nine years between each column.

American records are annual, so the peak there is exact. Gordon's largest share of American boys came in 1934, and its best American rank followed a year later at 70th. Both countries topped out in the same decade, and both then fell away.

CHAPTER 03

The day nobody signed

The observance is a different matter entirely. National Gordon Day has no founder on record, no establishment date, and no proclamation, resolution or registration behind it. It does not even appear on the main national-day listing for June 29.

What the day does have is a very well documented subject. Scotland, England and Wales, and the United States each publish their own record of who was named Gordon and when.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Gordon Day Around the World

Scotland

Gordon stayed inside Scotland's top 50 until 1990, and inside the top 100 until 1997. By then it had been absent from the ONS list for England and Wales for more than twenty years.

England and Wales

Gordon last appears in an ONS ten-yearly column in 1964, at 74th, and in none from 1974 onward. Behind the Name records its last ranked appearance in England and Wales as 809th in 1999.

United States

American parents have never stopped entirely. The name was given to 51 boys in 1880, its first year in the records, ranking 233rd.

Canada

Behind the Name records Gordon's last ranked appearance in Canada as 91st in 1985.

Ireland, Australia and New Zealand

Behind the Name puts the name's last ranked appearance at 90th in Ireland in 1977, and at 98th in New South Wales and 96th in New Zealand, both in 1967.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Gordon Day by the Numbers

1,179 per 100k
Scottish boys named Gordon, 1974-78
35 per 100k
American boys named Gordon, 1974-78
1.7x
Scottish vs American rate, 2021-25
6,336
Scottish Gordons registered since 1974
17,782
American Gordons registered since 1974

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

The name Gordon was created in honour of General Gordon, who died at Khartoum.

The truth

It cannot have been. Charles George Gordon was born in 1833 and bore the name himself, while the Berwickshire parish was already the seat of a family called Gordon in the 12th century, roughly seven hundred years earlier.

The myth

Parents took the name up because of General Gordon's death at Khartoum in 1885.

The truth

American birth records show no response specific to Gordon. The name rose about 50 percent across the five years after his death, but Stanley rose 53 percent, Kenneth 61 percent and Leslie 39 percent over the identical window with no connection to Khartoum at all.

The myth

National Gordon Day and Gordon Day are the same observance.

The truth

They are unrelated and fall on different dates. Republic Act No. 11217 makes 17 January a special nonworking holiday in the City of Olongapo and the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, known as James Leonard Tagle Gordon Day, and it honours one man by that surname rather than everyone who shares the first name.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Gordon Day

Britain's Kennel Club renamed the breed in 1924

Until then it was called simply the black-and-tan setter. The dog acquired the name a decade before the name reached its best British showing.

No American year is missing a Gordon

Gordon appears in all 146 annual files the Social Security Administration has published, covering every year from 1880 to 2025. Even at its quietest the name has never dropped out of the American record.

Scotland's peak came after England and Wales had dropped it

Scottish registrars recorded 430 boys named Gordon in 1978, ranking it 25th, the strongest showing in the 52 years the Scottish list covers. By then England and Wales had already dropped the name from the ONS top 100.

The place behind the name held 302 people

That was the Berwickshire village's recorded population in 1881, down from 336 a decade earlier. The whole surrounding parish came to 832.

The name hit a new low the year a Gordon took office

Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007. Scotland registered nine boys named Gordon that year, at rank 330, the lowest rate the national list had recorded for the name up to that point.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Gordon Day Matters

Scale

432 per 100,000 in Scotland, 18 in America

The Scottish register is 66 times smaller than the American one across the same 52 years. Over that whole period Scotland gave the name to 432 boys per 100,000, and the United States to 18.

Registers

National birth registers are the record of what a country actually named its children

Scotland, England and Wales, and the United States each publish their own, and on this name they land in very different places. That difference is only visible because the agencies have kept publishing for decades.

Bearers

The name is still being given

American registrars recorded 209 boys named Gordon in 2025, and Scottish registrars recorded three. A name well past its peak is not the same as a name that has gone.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Gordon Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look the name up in a national register

Scotland's full list runs from 1974 and the American files reach back to 1880, both published in full. Either one will show the year a name peaked in that country.

CHECK

Check an origin story before passing it on

The founding account attached to this day is specific, confident and unsupported by any record. Looking for the primary source behind a claim is the quickest way to find out whether one exists.

READ

Read up on the village the name came from

The village that gave the name its origin sits in the Scottish Borders. The historical gazetteer entry covers its church, its acreage and its nineteenth-century population.

ASK

Ask a Gordon how the name reached them

The registers record how many boys were given the name each year, but never why any one family chose it. That part tends to survive only in the family.

LEARN

Learn to tell the two Gordon days apart

June 29 is the informal name day, and 17 January is a statutory holiday in one Philippine city and freeport zone. Only the January date carries any legal force.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Gordon Day?

1 / 8

In 1974, where did Gordon rank among boys' names in Scotland?

Answer

No. No proclamation, resolution, registration or trademark for it has been identified, and it carries no legal standing in any country checked.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

11sources
6primary records
3independently dated
Primary records
National Records of Scotland26 May 2026
Babies' First Names, 2025
Every first forename recorded on a Scottish birth registration from 1974 to 2025, with its annual count and NRS's own rank. The source for Gordon's Scottish series, its rank of 30 in 1974, its 1978 high of 430 births, its exit from the top 100 after 1997 and its fall to three births in 2025.
View source
Office for National Statistics31 July 2025
Top 100 baby names in England and Wales: 1904 to 2024
The rank of every top-100 boys' name in England and Wales at ten-yearly intervals from 1904 to 2024. The source for Gordon's British trajectory, from 82nd in 1904 to 21st in the 1934 snapshot and out of the top 100 from 1974 onward.
View source
Social Security Administration
Popular Baby Names: national data
The annual count of every name given to five or more American babies since 1880, in 146 yearly files. The source for Gordon's American series, its 1934 share peak, its best rank of 70th in 1935, its unbroken presence in every year, and the controlled test of the Khartoum claim against comparable names.
View source
The LawPhil Project, Arellano Law Foundation14 February 2019
Republic Act No. 11217
The full statutory text declaring 17 January of every year a special nonworking holiday in the City of Olongapo and the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, to be known as James Leonard Tagle Gordon Day, approved on 14 February 2019.
View source
Social Security Administration
Top names of the 1960s
SSA's own published decade ranks, used to confirm that the annual data files reproduce the agency's printed results exactly before any figure was drawn from them.
View source
National Records of Scotland
Comeback kids Noah and Olivia back at top of baby name charts
NRS's own headline results for 2024 births, including that Noah topped the chart with 366, used to confirm the Scottish data file reproduces the agency's published figures.
View source
Additional coverage
The Gazetteer for Scotland
Parish of Gordon: Historical perspective
The historical gazetteer entry for the parish and village that gave the name its origin, covering its position eight miles north-west of Kelso at 500 feet, its recorded populations of 336 in 1871 and 302 in 1881, the 1171 transfer of St Michael's church, and its role as the original seat of the Gordons from the 12th till early in the 14th century.
View source
The Gazetteer for Scotland
Gordon: Overview
The present-day description of Gordon as a small village of Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders, lying eight miles north-west of Kelso, which developed in the nineteenth century around road and rail transport.
View source
American Kennel Club
Gordon Setter History: From Bird Dog to Devoted Companion
The breed's history, including that it was known simply as the black-and-tan setter until 1924, when Britain's Kennel Club renamed it the Gordon Setter, and its association with the fourth Duke of Gordon's kennel at Gordon Castle.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Gordon
The etymology of the given name, from a Scottish surname taken from a place in Berwickshire and built from Brythonic elements meaning spacious fort, together with that site's record of the last year the name was ranked in Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and England and Wales.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Charles George Gordon, British General, Siege of Khartoum
The general's dates, recording that he was born on 28 January 1833 at Woolwich and died at Khartoum on 26 January 1885 aged 51, against which the naming claim attached to his death is tested.
View source
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