

Jordan D. Brown
Oct 7, 2024
Spikes in popularity of the name Jordan are closely tied to milestones in Jumpman's career
WHEN I GRADUATED WITH THE CLASS OF '23 from Morgan State University – a historically Black university in Baltimore, Maryland – I wasn’t the only Jordan to walk across the stage that day. I was joined by five more Jordans – enough to field a basketball team’s starting lineup. Two of those Jordans were in the same journalism program as me.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been one of several Jordans in the same class. As a Gen Zer who shares a name with one of the world's most famous athletes -- and the force behind one of the top-selling sneakers on the planet -- it’s something I’ve experienced since before I played my first ever basketball game as an eight-year-old with the South Bowie Sharks, lacing up a fresh pair of sparkly silver Air Jordan 1s and doing my best to channel Michael Jordan’s greatness on the court.
As a first-grader at Pointer Ridge Elementary School, in my native Bowie, Maryland, I was one of three girls and one boy all named Jordan, with only one spelled differently – Geordan. Our teacher, Ms. Unthank, would say our last name initials whenever she called our names so we would know who she was talking to.
In many ways, those two bookends to my educational career – elementary school and college – reflect a much larger trend that has been taking place in American society since 1982. That’s when the name Jordan first became a Top 100 name for babies born in the U.S.
The name has held onto its lofty status ever since, but the year 2024 could be the first time in 41 years that Jordan won't be a Top 100 name for American babies, a Sneaker Theory analysis of federal baby name data shows.
Several onomasticians – people who study names – agree that Michael Jordan’s star power is probably what spawned the baby-naming trend that followed his varied accomplishments over the past five decades.
For instance, consider when the name jumped from #102 to #85 in 1982. That’s the same year that a baby-faced Michael Jordan – while wearing the #23 jersey for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels – scored the game-winning jump shot against the Georgetown University Hoyas. With 30.6 million viewers, it was one of the most widely-watched college championship games of all time.
The rise of the name Jordan – which in Hebrew means “to flow down” and refers to the famous river mentioned in the Bible – has closely followed various milestones in Michael Jordan’s career ever since.
“I think it is entirely plausible that the star power of Michael Jordan drove the naming trends,” John Parman, a professor of Economics at the College of William & Mary, told Sneaker Theory.
Parman -- who is co-author of a paper titled "Distinctively Black Names in the American Past" -- notes how the popularity of the name Jordan in the 1990s followed the same arc as the name Booker in the 1890s. That’s when educator and orator Booker T. Washington – who would later publish his autobiography, “Up From Slavery,” in 1901 – became one of the most influential Black American intellectuals of his time.

“The duration of Booker's popularity really mirrors that of Jordan, rising significantly as Booker T. Washington rises to national prominence in the late 1890s and then enjoying roughly four decades of pronounced popularity,” Parman says.


Parman says he wonders whether the recent uptick in the name Booker could be associated with the rise in the popularity of Devin Booker, the 4x All-Star shooting guard for the Phoenix Suns. Booker's signature shoe -- the Nike Book 1 -- is the inspiration for SneakerTheory.org.
David Andrews, professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland and author of several papers on Jordan’s appeal as a global sports figure, businessman and cultural icon, says Jordan took the commercialization of sports “to a new level.”
“The guy was everywhere. He had his own movie out of ‘Space Jam,’” Andrews says of the 1996 movie that combined live-action and animation to gross $230.6 million worldwide, making it the top-grossing basketball movie of all time.
“So maybe he got more into the American psyche perhaps than any other sports figure up to that point in time,” Andrews says. “The fact that he's viewed as an iconic, legendary status, superior performance, and just an uber celebrity type of identity and value must be considered quite appealing.”
New research gives further support to the idea that Americans see Jordan as a synonym for greatness. For instance, in one 2023 study, researchers examined how Americans used Jordan’s name in popular discourse. They found that Michael Jordan “became the most famous athlete” between 1992 and 2018, surpassing slugger Babe Ruth and boxing great Muhammad Ali. While people related Babe Ruth to excellence and linked Muhammad Ali to magnificence, the study found that Michael Jordan was associated most with greatness.
There's ample evidence that Americans will name their children after certain superstar basketball players., especially those who win three-peats. Take, for instance, Kobe Bryant. Before he was drafted to the NBA in 1996, the name Kobe wasn't even a top 500 name for babies born in the U.S. But in the three successive years he won championships with the Los Angeles Lakers -- 2000, 2001 and 2002 -- the name Kobe ranked #238. #222 and #244, respectively.
The popularity of the name Kobe eventually faded to pre-three-peat levels, but surged back to #239 in 2020 -- the same year Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna died in a horrific helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. Kobe had been signed to Nike, which continues to release shoes named after him to this day. Notably, Kobe was also a Jordan protege.
A 'Hollywood' Jordan
My parents have told me that I myself am named after Jordan Armstrong, a character played by Nia Long in Malcolm D. Lee’s 1999 film “The Best Man.” My mom admired Jordan’s confidence and how she carried herself. She wanted her next child to have similar traits, whether it was a boy or girl.
It wasn’t until I watched the movie in college that I recognized the connection to my Hollywood namesake was much deeper than I had previously thought. In the movie, Jordan Armsrong is a news producer. At Morgan State, I majored in multimedia journalism. I’ve been working in the news business ever since.

But there’s a chance that even Jordan Armstrong’s name was influenced by Michael Jordan.
According to Cleveland Evans, an expert at the American Name Society, an organization that promotes onomastics -- or the study of the history and origin of proper names -- fictional characters are sometimes given popular names that weren’t popular when they were born. He referred to the concept as a part of something he calls “Hollywood feedback loop.”
“You very often get characters, especially on TV, who have names that are really a generation too young for them, because the people who are writing the scripts are naming the characters the names they would have named the baby if they'd had a baby at that time,” Evans explains. “That introduces the name quickly to a wide audience and gives it this extra oomph.”
Evans notes that the Jordan Armstrong character would have been born in the 1970s “when the name still would have been extremely, extremely rare, below the top 1,000 for girls.”
Sneaker Theory reached out to Malcolm D. Lee to ask about his rationale behind Jordan Armstrong’s name but did not get a response. The film director has quite a few connections to Michael Jordan. In addition to being a Michael Jordan fan, he is also the cousin of Spike Lee, who served as a pitchman for Air Jordan models 3 through 6 in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Malcolm D. Lee also directed the 2021 version of “Space Jam” that featured LeBron James, who idolized Jordan growing up.
Graduating in a 'Jordan' year
By the time I was born in 2001 – the same year Jordan came out of retirement and laced up for the Washington Wizards – the name Jordan ranked #47 for female babies. I was one of 16,614 American Jordans born in 2001, according to one online baby name analyzer.
The year I graduated from college – which I celebrated as a “Jordan year,” which us Jordans celebrate on our 23rd birthday anniversary – the name Jordan had fallen to #98. Based on current trends, the year 2023 could mark the end of a 41-year era in which the name Jordan ranked as a Top 100 baby name in the U.S.
Still, it’s not hard to find people who were named Jordan simply because at least one of their parents – as Sneaker Theory reported in July 2024 – was a “huge MJ fan.”
And it's easy to find Jordans among the new generations of America’s most well-known athletes, such as Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love and Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles, who were both named after Michael Jordan.
Only time will tell if this new generation of Jordans will inspire parents to name their children Jordan in the coming years – much like the OG Jordan has over the past few decades. The Social Security Administration will release its Top 100 baby name list for 2024 on Mother’s Day in 2025.
Regardless of whether the name’s popularity rises or falls, there will be plenty of Jordans walking across the stage at America’s high school and college graduations for years to come. But only a select few of us Jordans will ever know the joy of doing it with the Class of ‘23 – the last true Jordan year of the 21st century.


Jordan D. Brown graduated summa cum laude with a degree in multimedia journalism from Morgan State University in the Class of ‘23. She is currently a master’s degree candidate in the journalism program at NYU. She can be reached at jordybphotography at gmail dot com.
Sneaker Theory founder Jamaal Abdul-Alim, also known as Professor J, contributed to this report.