Gordon Family History

Scottish: habitational name from Gordon in Berwickshire named with Welsh gor ‘spacious’ + din ‘fort’. English (of Norman origin): habitational name from Gourdon in Saône-et-Loire so called from the Gallo-Roman personal name Gordus + the locative suffix -o -ōnis. English (of Norman origin): alternatively said to be a nickname from a diminutive of Old French gourd ‘heavy dull sluggish’ (compare 8 below).

Irish: adopted as an English equivalent of Gaelic Mag Mhuirneacháin see Gordan. Jewish (from Lithuania): probably a habitational name from the Belorussian city of Grodno. Spanish and Galician (Gordón); Basque: habitational name from a place called Gordón (Spanish Galician) or Gordon (Basque) of which there are examples in Salamanca Galicia and Basque Country.

Spanish: possibly in some instances from an augmentative of the nickname Gordo (see Gordillo). French: of Scottish origin (see 1 above) or a variant of Gourdon (and in North America perhaps also an altered form of this) a nickname derived from Old French gourd ‘heavy dull sluggish’ (see Gourd compare 3 above).

Americanized form of French Godin.