Thompson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘son of Tom’, i.e. Thomas; first attested John Thomson 1318 Black (Carrick)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈtɑmpsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Thompson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 20th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 320(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 420
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 424
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #117 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 629 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 320 (inferred from the name graph)
664,644 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘son of Tom’, i.e. Thomas; first attested John Thomson 1318 Black (Carrick)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Thompson counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #20 | 664,644 | 1 in 500 | 665K | Thompson | 629 |
| GB United Kingdom | #12 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 424 | 26K | Thompson | 364 |
| CA Canada | #14 | ≈74,000 est. | ≈1 in 512 | 2 | Thompson | 315 |
| EG Egypt | #503 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Thompson | 33 |
| NG Nigeria | #350 | ≈68,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Thompson | 98 |
| AU Australia | #14 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 496 | 1 | Thompson | 315 |
| NZ New Zealand | #11 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 420 | — | Thompson | 186 |
| JM Jamaica | #5 | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 320 | — | Thompson | 58 |
| IS Iceland | #38 | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 444 | 1 | Thompson | 22 |
664,644 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Thompson is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A British surname transferred from the given name.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘son of Thomas’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, James Robert, US politician
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, ['ems]. Fran zos. Aussprache: [em'ma].
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Hunter S. Thompsonb. 1937USAmerican journalist and author (1937–2005)
- Fred Thompsonb. 1942USAmerican politician and actor (1942–2015)
- Ken Thompsonb. 1943USAmerican programmer and computer scientist, co-creator of the Unix operating system (born 1943)
- Mark Thompsonb. 1957GBTelevision executive
- Emma Thompsonb. 1959GBEnglish actress and screenwriter (born 1959)
- Lea Thompsonb. 1961USAmerican actress
- Scottie Thompsonb. 1981USAmerican actress
- Tessa Thompsonb. 1983USAmerican actress
- Klay Thompsonb. 1990USAmerican basketball player (born 1990)
- Jasmine Thompsonb. 2000GBBritish singer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 79 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 665K | #23 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 644K | #19 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 640K | #23 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Thompson mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘son of Tom’, i.e. Thomas; first attested John Thomson 1318 Black (Carrick) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Thompson?
- In the etymology graph, Thomson is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Thompson have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 665 thousand people named Thompson, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled thompson.
- How common is the name Thompson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 664,644 people named Thompson in 2010, about 1 in 500 residents.
- How common is Thompson compared with other names?
- In the United States, Thompson is the 20th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Thompson?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈtɑmpsən/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Thompson?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/thompsonThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Thompson” — the 20th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.