Who started National Jordan Day and why is it on May 27?

The day circulates on holiday listing sites and on social media, where people mark it as a name day for everyone called Jordan. No founder, proclamation or registrar filing has been found for it, and no source explains the choice of May 27.

Is National Jordan Day the same as Jordan's Independence Day?

No. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan marks its independence on May 25, two days earlier, while this observance is for people who carry the given name.

Do these counts include other spellings of the name?

No. Every figure here counts the exact spelling Jordan in the Social Security Administration's yearly files, which run from 1880 through 2025. Those files list a name only when at least five babies of one sex received it that year.

National Jordan Day

Next celebratedThursday, May 27, 2027

Crusaders brought water home from the river Jordan to baptize their children, and the river became a first name. The day covers the boys and the girls alike.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated August 30, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMay 27

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The earliest trace is an aggregator page from 2022.

National Jordan Day circulates on holiday-listing sites and on social media as a name day for people called Jordan, and the earliest trace found anywhere is an aggregator page first captured on 1 December 2022. No founder, proclamation or registrar filing documents it.

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INTRO

Social Security records put the name's climb before 1982

National Jordan Day lands on a name that comes with a ready explanation. A basketball player made it popular, the story goes. The federal file of baby names tells it in a different order.

Go back to 1976. The file counts 515 boys named Jordan that year. Five years later it counts 2,924.

Michael Jordan hit the shot that made him famous on March 29, 1982. By then the name had already more than quintupled. His career lines up with what happened next, not with what started it.

ORIGINS

Jordan Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name began as a place. A river runs between what are now Jordan and Israel, and Hebrew calls it Yarden, from a root meaning to descend, flow down. Crusaders brought its water home to baptize their children, and the river's name went with it.

That is the story the reference works tell, and the dated record complicates it. The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources finds Jordan in France from the 9th century onwards, two centuries before the First Crusade. Its editors put the crusader era at the height of the name's popularity, not at its first use.

CHAPTER 01

The name that died and came back

England's earliest citation for the name is dated 1155. The Wycliffite Bible would still spell it Jordan two centuries later. Then it died out after the Middle Ages, and the 1800s brought it back.

CHAPTER 02

A century in the low hundreds

In American records the revived name stayed small for most of a century, running between ten and a hundred boys in a typical year. Then it climbed hard, and it stayed high through the seasons Michael Jordan spent winning championships. "There's a long history of star athletes inspiring baby name trends," Laura Wattenberg of Namerology told TODAY.com.

The director Jordan Peele was born in New York City in 1979, near the bottom of that climb. Jordan Spieth arrived in Dallas in 1993, deep inside the plateau that followed.

CHAPTER 03

A day that arrived without a signature

The observance itself has no such paper trail. Nobody is on record as its author, and no source explains why the date is May 27. It is not the country's day either, since the Hashemite Kingdom marks its independence on May 25.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Jordan Day

EVIDENCE

Most name stories rest on memory. This one has a file.

Most claims about why a name caught on rest on memory. This one rests on a public file: the Social Security Administration has counted names by sex from card applications since 1880, and the ranks quoted here hold whether ties are broken alphabetically or allowed to share a place.

SPORT

Seventy Jordans on one season's rosters

NCAA.com counted 70 Jordans among 5,637 Division I men's basketball players in 2021. Its writers stopped short of calling it cause and effect, speculating only that there "could have also been a correlation".

CALENDAR

The name already had a day

In Bulgaria the name Yordan is honoured on January 6, when a priest throws a cross into cold water and young men dive to retrieve it. In Kalofer the men dance a horo in the Tundzha River.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Jordan Day by the Numbers

536,795: US babies named Jordan, 1880-2025
22,094: US babies named Jordan in 1990
135,599: US girls named Jordan since 1880
70.0%: Share of male US Jordans born 1989-2012

TIMELINE

Timeline

Earliest dated Jordan in France

A Latin record in the cartulary of Notre-Dame de Saintes carries the name half a century before the First Crusade.

The name reaches England

The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources gives this year as its earliest English citation for Jordan.

The name registers for girls

For the first time the national data records American girls named Jordan, a run that would peak nearly half a century later.

Jordan enters the boys' top 100

The name ranked 85th among American boys, up from 102nd the year before.

The best rank on record

Jordan reached 26th among American boys, its highest position in the national data.

Last year in the top 50

The name closed a run of 24 consecutive years inside the American boys' top 50.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Jordan Day

In Shakespeare's England a jordan was a chamber pot

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust calls it "popular slang for a chamber-pot or potty", and quotes Henry IV Part 1: "they will allow us ne'er a jordan, and then we leak in your chimney". The Trust suspects the word came from the little containers pilgrims used to carry sacred Jordan water home.

One year is missing from the whole record

Jordan appears in the national boys' data in every year from 1880 through 2025 except 1890. The agency does not list a name given to fewer than five babies of one sex in a year, and that year Jordan fell under the line.

Jordan had a top-40 run for girls

The name reached 40th among American girls in 1997. In that peak year roughly one in three American babies named Jordan was a girl.

Medieval England shortened Jordan to Jud and Jude

Poll tax records from 1379 in the West Riding of Yorkshire carry the bynames Judson and "Jude Doghter". Both are diminutives of a name a bishop of Poland had already borne in the 900s.

Fitzgerald put the name on a woman in 1925

The Great Gatsby introduces the golfer Jordan Baker a quarter of a century before American records first counted five or more girls with the name in a single year.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Jordan Day

Tell the Jordans in your life

A name day only works if the people carrying the name hear about it. Send a message to every Jordan in your contacts and let them have the day.

LOOK

Look up a Jordan's birth year

The national baby name data runs by name, sex and year back to 1880. Find the year your Jordan was born and see how much company they had.

TRACE

Trace the name back to its river

Behind the Name keeps a full entry for it. Read the etymology entry and pass the short version along to a Jordan who has never heard it.

READ

Read the pages that introduce Jordan Baker

Jordan Baker is Fitzgerald's golfer, and she is worth meeting in the original. The full text is free to read at Project Gutenberg.

SETTLE

Settle the basketball question at dinner

Ask the table when they think the name took off, then pull up the yearly counts. The dates are public, so the argument resolves itself in about a minute.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Jordan Day?

1 / 8

Where does the given name Jordan come from?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance rather than a public holiday anywhere on record, so it is a normal working day. A full-text search of the Federal Register returns zero documents containing the phrase.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

15sources

6primary records

8independently dated

Primary records

Social Security Administration2026

National data on the relative frequency of given names (names.zip, 1880-2025)

Yearly counts of every US baby name given to five or more children, by sex.