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Ancesta specimen report

No. 00001

Gordon

Est. 1150

Uncommon

Version 2 · 1 new findings

The Name Sheet

Ancesta · The Name Sheet

No. 00001

Gordon

A hill above marshy ground — the topographic name of a place in the Berwickshire Merse, carried by the family that held it.

Established
1150Berwickshire
Name type
Topographic
1County Down, Ulster1610 – 17002Nova Scotia1746 – 18203Otago, New Zealand1848 – 1880
Fig. 1 — The Journey. 3 documented waypoints, 1610 – 1700 to 1848 – 1880.

Rarity

88.4%

Bearers today

412,000

1 in

19,400

1150121314151617181920you
Fig. 2 — 9 Centuries. From the earliest dated record to you.

Also written as

  • Gordoun
  • Gordone
  • Gordan

Most common in

CountryShare of all
bearersShare of local
people
  • United States41.2%0.051%
  • United Kingdom21.8%0.132%
  • Jamaica8.40%1.24%
  • Canada6.10%0.063%

Two different measurements. Left: of every living bearer of this name worldwide, the share who live in that country. Right: of every resident of that country, the share who carry the name.

ancesta.

Surname history research

Plate I

Meaning & etymology

What the name was built from, and which naming tradition it belongs to.

A hill above marshy ground — the topographic name of a place in the Berwickshire Merse, carried by the family that held it.

Confident
Root language
Old English, by way of Anglo-Norman Scots
Name type
Topographic

Topographic surnames name a place, not a person. Everyone living on or holding that ground could take it independently, which is why the name appears in unrelated households from the start.

How it first sounded

de Gordun

duh GOR-doon — stress on the first syllable, final -un said like 'oon'

Twelfth-century Scots clerks wrote the second element as -dun, closer to the Old English 'dūn' than the flattened -don of modern speech.

  1. gor

    Old English

    mud, wet ground, or a marshy hollow

  2. dun

    Old English

    a hill, ridge, or upland pasture

Fig. 1 — the name broken into its documented components.
Fig. 2 — how the documented parts compound into the name as it is written today.

Plate II

One of 3 documented origins

Origins

Where the name starts. Separate origins mean separate families — not one line.

  1. 01

    Berwickshire, Scottish Borders

    c. 1120 – 1300Confident

    The parish of Gordon in the Merse gives the name its documented origin. Anglo-Norman settlers granted land there under David I appear in charters as 'de Gordun', a locative styling that hardens into a hereditary surname within three generations.

  2. 02

    Strathbogie, Aberdeenshire

    1408 onwardConfident

    A northern branch takes possession of Strathbogie after the forfeiture of the Earls of Buchan. The Aberdeenshire Gordons are a documented offshoot of the Berwickshire family rather than a separate origin, but the north is where the name becomes numerous.

  3. 03

    Ulster plantation districts

    1610 – 1700Probable

    Lowland Scots settlement carries the name into Down and Antrim. Ulster Gordons descend from several unrelated Scottish households moving in the same decades.

Three origins mean at least three separate families. A shared surname is not evidence of a shared ancestor.

Plate III

The ground it names

Where the name was fixed to the land: the settlements, parishes and features the record ties it to.

Fig. 3 — the named ground, plotted from the coordinates in the record.

  1. Gordun

    Today: Gordon, Scottish Borders

    Parish of Gordon, the Merse, Berwickshire

    55.689°N 2.549°W

    The parish that gives the name its meaning: a low ridge standing above wet carse ground, held under David I and named in charters a generation before anyone carried it as a surname.

  2. Strathbogie

    Today: Huntly, Aberdeenshire

    Strathbogie, Aberdeenshire

    57.447°N 2.783°W

    Not an origin but the name's second centre of gravity: the lands taken in 1408, after which the great majority of dated Gordon entries are northern rather than Border.

A topographic name is tied to ground, not to a bloodline. These coordinates locate the record, not your ancestors.

Plate IV

Earliest records

The first appearances we can date, as the clerk wrote them, with the document named.

  1. 1150

    Confident

    Richer de Gordun

    Berwickshire

    Witness list, charter of Bishop Robert of St Andrews to Kelso Abbey

    The earliest firm attestation of the surname in any spelling.

  2. 1204

    Probable

    Thomas de Gordun

    Merse, Berwickshire

    Perambulation of the bounds of Gordon parish

    Newly indexed in this version of the report.

  3. 1296

    Confident

    Adam de Gordoun

    Berwick-upon-Tweed

    Ragman Roll — homage sworn to Edward I

Plate V

The timeline

Century by century, the events the record will carry — and the periods it will not.

Fig. 4 — record density across the centuries this name survives in.
  1. 011150 — Richer de Gordun witnesses a charter in the Merse of Berwickshire
  2. 021296 — Adam de Gordoun's name is entered on the Ragman Roll
  3. 031408 — The family's lands shift north to Strathbogie in Aberdeenshire
  4. 041746 — Post-Culloden dispersal carries the name to Nova Scotia and Ulster
  5. 051881 — Aberdeenshire records the densest concentration of Gordons in Britain

  1. 12th century

    1150

    Berwickshire

    The name enters the written record as a locative styling in Kelso Abbey's charter witness lists.

  2. 17th century

    1610

    County Down

    Plantation settlement carries Lowland Gordon households into Ulster, where the name is still concentrated.

  3. 18th century

    1746

    Nova Scotia and the Carolinas

    Post-Culloden dispersal and tenancy clearance push emigrant Gordons to the Maritimes and the American south.

The record goes quiet here.

  • 1300 – 1400

    Berwickshire's records were repeatedly destroyed during the Wars of Independence. Fourteenth-century Gordon holdings are known from later retours rather than contemporary deeds.

Plate VI

Migration & spread

Documented concentrations in the order the record supports them. Tap a waypoint for its story.

1County Down, Ulster1610 – 17002Nova Scotia1746 – 18203Otago, New Zealand1848 – 1880

Scroll to zoom · drag to pan

Fig. 5 — documented waypoints in record order; the dotted line is a sequence of concentrations, not a family's route.

County Down, Ulster · 1610 – 1700

Plantation settlement from the Scottish Lowlands.

The route is Border parish to northern earldom, then out along two Scottish diasporas: Ulster by plantation, and the Atlantic and Pacific by emigration.

Plate VII

Distribution today

Where the name lives now, and how that estimate was reached.

Bearers today
412,000
1 in
19,400

In Aberdeenshire, roughly one person in every 120 still carries the name.

Aggregated national surname indexes and electoral rolls, weighted to 2024 population figures. Estimates for countries without a public index are excluded rather than modelled.

CountryShare of all bearersof every bearer worldwide, the share living thereShare of local peopleof that country's residents, the share who carry it
  • United States
    41.2%
    0.051%9.8× the world average
  • United Kingdom
    21.8%
    0.132%26× the world average
  • Jamaica
    8.40%
    1.24%240× the world average
  • Canada
    6.10%
    0.063%12× the world average
  • Australia
    4.70%
    0.072%14× the world average
  • New Zealand
    2.20%
    0.174%34× the world average
Fig. 6 — two different measurements. Left: of every living bearer of this name worldwide, the share in each country — ranked most to least. Right: of every resident of that country, the share who carry the name.

Plate VIII

Rarity

How unusual the name is against every other surname in the same records.

Rarity percentile

88.4%

Uncommon

Fig. 7 — rarity against every other surname in the same records.

Share this rank

1 in 19,400

Gordon sits in the uncommon band — roughly one bearer in every 19,400 people.

Plate IX

Variants & spellings

Clerks wrote what they heard, in the orthography they had. Each shift has a reason.

Fig. 8 — variant forms in dated record contexts.
Fig. 9 — dated forms in the order the clerks wrote them.

Every shift here is a clerk's decision, not a family's. The spelling settles on Gordon only once print and civil registration standardise it in the nineteenth century.

Plate X

Cousins abroad

Names in other languages built from the same root — related by linguistics, not by blood.

These names were built the same way in different languages. Shared construction is not shared descent.

A shared root means two names were built the same way in different languages. It is not evidence that their bearers share an ancestor.

Plate XI

Notable bearers

People the record names, with the strength of each identification stated.

Sharing this surname with anyone named here is not evidence of descent from them.

Plate XII

Arms & heraldry

What was actually granted, to whom, by which authority — and what no surname has ever had.

Fig. 11 — how to read this shieldThis is a status marker, not a drawing of anyone's arms — no blazon is being rendered. The band at the top says whether a grant of arms appears in the published rolls we searched, the number is the year that grant was made, and the footer is the rule that governs it: arms belong to the person granted them and their documented descendants, never to everyone who shares the surname.

  1. Gordon of Huntly

    1672Court of the Lord Lyon, Public Register of All Arms and BearingsConfident

    Azure, three boars' heads couped or

    Matriculated to one chiefly line and its cadets. The register records the grant to named individuals, not to everyone carrying the surname.

Read this before you buy a “family crest”

There is no such thing as a family crest for a surname. In Scots law arms belong to a person and pass by matriculation, not to everyone who shares a name — anything sold as 'the Gordon coat of arms' is decoration, not heraldry.

Plate XIII

Badges & figures

The screenshot-ready end of the research. Every badge is exportable on its own.

  • Established

    1150

  • Centuries in the record

    9

  • Rarity band

    Uncommon

  • Documented spellings

    4 forms

  • Countries mapped

    5 waypoints

  • Densest county

    Aberdeenshire

Older than

  • the Magna Carta (1215)
  • the University of Cambridge (1209)
  • the last wolf in Scotland (c. 1680)
  • every surname in Sweden that ends -sson by law (1901)

Name twins

412,000

About 412,000 people alive today write your surname the same way you do — roughly the population of Zurich.

The world around it

What else was being written down while this name was finding its spelling.

  1. 1124David I takes the Scottish throne and begins granting Border lands to Anglo-Norman incomers.
  2. 1150Your surname is written down for the first time, in a witness list at Kelso Abbey.
  3. 1215Magna Carta is sealed at Runnymede — sixty-five years after the first dated Gordun.
  4. 1249The first stone bridge across the Tweed at Berwick is recorded, in the same district.
Fig. 12 — dated anchors within a century of the first attestation.

Plate XIV

Where to look next

Named archives and record series where this surname is likely to appear, and why we send you there.

  1. 01

    Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)

    Estate and tenancy papers, Down and Antrim

    1610 – 1830

    Free on site; selected catalogues online

    The Ulster line the report marks as probable can be tested here, where plantation-era tenancy lists record Lowland Scots arrivals by name.

These are shelves where the surname is likely to appear. Whether any entry is your ancestor is a question for personal genealogy, not surname history.

This is the honest edge of surname history. Past this point the work becomes personal genealogy — your own line, your own documents — and these are the shelves it starts on.

Plate XV

Sources & methodology

Every citation in this report, the confidence ledger, and what we did not find.

Confident

Two or more independent sources agree. Printed as fact.

Probable

One source carries the claim. Printed, and marked.

Contested

Independent sources genuinely disagree. Both readings are printed side by side, each with its own citations. We do not pick a winner.

Quiet

Nothing citable survives. The section says so rather than filling the space.

The confidence ledger

PlateConf.Prob.Cont.Status
I · Meaning & etymology1——Printed
II · Origins21—Printed
III · The ground it names2——Printed
IV · Earliest records21—Printed
V · The timeline21—Printed
VI · Migration & spread12—Printed
VII · Distribution today1——Printed
IX · Variants & spellings12—Printed
X · Cousins abroad—2—Printed
XI · Notable bearers1——Printed
XII · Arms & heraldry1——Printed
XIV · Where to look next—1—Printed
Fig. 13 — every claim in this report, graded and counted.
  1. 1Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongueetymology · earliest records · timeline · variants · cousins
  2. 2Black, The Surnames of Scotland (1946)etymology · origins · place · earliest records · timeline · notables
  3. 3Instrumenta Publica (Ragman Roll), Bannatyne Club 1834origins · place · earliest records · variants
  4. 4Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, vol. IIorigins · place · variants · heraldry
  5. 5Scotland's Places — 1881 census surname indexorigins · timeline · migration · distribution · variants · cousins · records roadmap
  6. 6National Records of Scotland — Berwickshire retoursplace · earliest records · heraldry
  7. 7Forebears surname distribution indextimeline · migration · distribution
  8. 8Oxford Dictionary of National Biographynotables

On the gaps

Every section of this report reached citable ground. Where a single source carried a claim, it is marked probable rather than dressed up as fact, and where sources disagreed the claim is marked contested with both readings shown.

Surname history research, not personal genealogy: a shared surname is not evidence of a shared ancestor.

Colophon

Report number
No. 00001
Edition
Version 2
Researched
12 January 2026
Research method
16 validated steps
Plates
Fifteen, in fixed order
Citations
8

Researched by Ancesta’s chained research pipeline: each step runs as its own validated job against archival and scholarly sources, and any claim that cannot show two independent citations is printed as probable, printed as contested, or not printed at all. Typeset in Space Grotesk and Fraunces. Set on the Ancesta atlas grid.