Great Gatsby actress Jordan Baker: My unusual name is a curse Elizabeth Debicki playing Jordan Baker in the 2013 version of The Great Gatsby Source: Supplied AN UNUSUAL name can be a curse. For 36 years, I've been deflecting taunts, answering absurd questions and reassuring strangers that I am, in fact, a woman, simply because my name is Jordan. "You must be a boy because your name's a boy's name," was the daily, painful taunt from the kids in primary school, and I could say little to refute them. I knew of only one other contemporary girl Jordan, and that was Elisabeth Shue's character in Cocktail. She didn't come along until I was 11, and she wasn't even real. As the years passed, new difficulties emerged. It was tough being a teenager with a crush on Jordan Knight from New Kids on the Block. If we married, we'd be Jordan and Jordan. And what if I fell in love with a man whose last name was Jordan? Would I have to refuse him, lest I become Jordan Jordan? Have you an unusual name. Tell us your stories As an adult, the main problem has been confusion. I regularly have to convince people in call centres that they are talking to Jordan, not his wife. I have been prevented from getting on planes because the airline booking agent listed me as "Mr." Women have criticised me for writing about women's issues. I've even been called sleazy. Then there are the relentless questions about where my strange name comes from. "Were you named after Michael Jordan?" is the most common, usually from men and almost invariably accompanied by a mimicked slam dunk (No. Michael Jordan was only 14 when I was born.) Interview with The Daily Telegraph cost Michael Jordan $100K Some ask if I was named after the country or river. (No, although I did have a wonderful time when I visited Jordan. It was nice to introduce myself and hear shouts of delight.) And for a difficult decade, spanning the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was constantly asked if I was named after Jordan the model, real name Katie Price, she of the enormous fake breasts and the marriage to Aussie Peter Andre. Young men forgot about Michael Jordan and quizzed me about my bra size. Price's choice of pseudonym was a cruel blow for the handful of girl Jordans, who surely had enough to deal with already. Pictures: Jordan, aka Katie Price But rarely have people clued onto the true origin of my name. When they do, I feel like giving them a prize. As I am constantly explaining, it is this: I was named after Jordan Baker, a character from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In what was described as a 'disaster' interview, The Great Gatsby star Carey Mulligan couldn't compose herself during her chat on Sunrise. The Robert Redford film of Gatsby came put three years before I was born and my mother adored Lois Chiles, who played Jordan Baker. She also admired fictional Jordan's beauty and poise, and my father liked the fact that she was a famous golfer (His attempts to turn his own Jordan into a golfer failed miserably). Pictures: Amazing shots of The Great Gatsby being filmed So Jordan Baker I became, although I've often wished Mum had been besotted by Mia Farrow so I could have been Daisy instead. Perhaps it's because we share not one name, but two, that I have always felt bound to this character. For a while, fictional Jordan was a talisman. When I was a kid and complained to my mother about the teasing, she told me Jordan came from a brilliant, important book, and that one day, when I was older and among adults, people would understand and my name would be a reason to be proud. News Limited catches all the stars at the Australian launch of Baz Luhrmann's movie spectacular, The Great Gatsby. I believed her. I endured the barbs, devoured the movie and, while I waited for that longed-for day, saw my grown-up self as a gorgeous flapper. I imagined myself lying in a luxurious salon, like Jordan and Daisy when we first meet them in the novel. "They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote through his narrator, Nick Carraway. I waited and waited, but my mother's prophesy didn't come true. Even as I hit adulthood, my name was no better understood. It was all Michael Jordan and Katie Price. Mum had too much faith in other people's reading habits. Surely, though, there would be some relief during my three-year English major at university? But no. I had one comment from one lecturer until third year, when The Great Gatsby was on the American literature reading list. Filming of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby moves to the International College of Management in Manly where a 1920's style party was re-created. I thought my big moment had arrived. It took all my will power not to turn up to the lecture in a billowing white dress. But I fell to Earth with a thud; the class didn't like Jordan Baker one bit. And, when I looked at her through fresh, adult eyes, I saw they had a point. Jordan wasn't quite the dazzling creature I'd imagined through my childhood. She had a "discontented face." She was cynical, aloof and hard. She cheated at golf. She was ambitious, independent and self-centred. She was one of the careless people Fitzgerald was so scathing about, a symbol of the materialistic jazz age itself. "Jordan Baker is incurably dishonest," wrote Fitzgerald, through Nick. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body. I was devastated. My romance with The Great Gatsby disintegrated. I was named after an unsympathetic character from a book most people had forgotten about. But, just as I'd all but moved on, along came Baz Luhrmann. I had mixed feelings when I heard Lurhmann was remaking The Great Gatsby. Yes, he would bring the story to the masses. People might stop asking if I was named after Michael Jordan. But after 36 years I was at peace with my name, and another Luhrmann disaster on the scale of Australia, or a badly cast Jordan Baker, could stir up old demons. I needn't have worried. The film's not perfect, but it's a cracking two-and-a-half hours of entertainment. The questions have started _ polite now, and interested. Instead of the usual, "that's a strange name," or, as I've had a few times, "I can't believe your parents did that to you," I'm now hearing "Oh, you're named after that character from The Great Gatsby!" What's more, the actress who plays her, Elizabeth Debicki, has made her fabulous. She turns poor, maligned Jordan into an intriguing modern woman facing demons and pushing boundaries. She embraces the fears and feelings that run beneath that hard facade. She also rocks the frocks, from the golf suit to the flapper dresses. And, having been anointed the breakthrough talent from the film by everyone from Vulture to the Huffington Post, she is spruiking Jordan Baker to newspapers and magazines all over the world. "It was the most fun I've ever had playing a character," Debicki tells The Sunday Telegraph. There is something really liberating about playing someone who is so reckless, with real commitment issues. She has made me proud to be Jordan Baker. I expect, thanks to Debicki, many little girls born this year will be named Jordan. I hope they will not be teased as I was, or, if they are, I hope they will take a bit of advice from Debicki herself, some advice I wish I'd had a long time ago. "I still pinch myself," she told the Huffington Post of her experience on Gatsby. There are times in your life where you think, 'I have nothing to lose, so I'm going to completely do this thing and just enjoy it'. Which is probably the essence of Jordan. Jordan Baker is on Twitter @jordsbaker