Where the Gordon name comes from

The Scottish surname Gordon named someone who came from Gordon, a village in Berwickshire. Where that place name came from is still argued, one reading building it from a Brythonic compound of gor, meaning spacious, and din, meaning fort, and another from an Old English gor-dun, a mud hill. The English surname followed a different road, from Gourdon in Saone-et-Loire, France, a place that took its name from the Gallo-Roman personal name Gordus.

In Ireland the name grew from more than one root: the Scottish surname arrived during the plantation era of the 17th century and was written de Górdún in Irish. The same spelling also stands in for Mag Mhuirneacháin, a patronymic meaning son of Muirneachán, built on the Irish word muirneach, meaning beloved. A third Irish line anglicises the surname Mórbhoirneach. In Spanish and Galician, Gordón comes from places of that name, and one further Spanish line comes from the nickname Gordo, from the word gordo, meaning fat.