Was there any intentional meaning behind Gordon Freeman's surname?

Question

In Half-Life 2, we do hear the Vortigaunts referring to Gordon as "The Free Man" which kind of makes sense under the oppressive regime of the Combine and that he has become the symbol of the resistance. (Fighting for freedom).

But I'm assuming the creators of the game didn't plan this while they were making the first Half-Life - and yes while Gordon does apparently free the Vortigaunts at the end of it, it's not really what the game is about.

So was it just a happy coincidence that his name was "Freeman" and the "Free" part of the plot would become relevant in the second game or does it have another meaning?

Answer 1

Gordon Freeman was chosen by Gabe Newell as an adaptation of a name given by Marc Laidlaw. Marc wanted a mash up of the physicist Freeman Dyson and mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré. However, Gabe wasn't a fan of "Dyson Poincare" and so decided to go with "Gordon Freeman" instead. The Freeman part then is apparently there because of Freeman Dyson and nothing more.

"We went round and round on names for the character. I thought it should evoke some famous scientist, so I took the name of one of my heroes, physicist/philosopher, Freeman Dyson, and smushed his name together with that of the French mathematician, Jules Henri Poincaré. I proudly blurted out Dyson Poincare. Gabe immediately countered with the far more reasonable Gordon Freeman, and that was that. Like many important game design discussions in those days, this all happened at lunchtime, in Gabe's car, en route to our favourite Japanses restaurant." - Marc Laidlaw.

_{Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar}