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Thompson Surname: Meaning, Origin & Hull Research

Updated 15 Nov 2026

Thompson is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Thom", where Thom was a medieval short form of Thomas. It is one of the commonest names in Yorkshire. We found no documented Hull family or firm called Thompson that we could verify, so this page covers the meaning, the curious "p", the early records and how to research the name in Hull.

What does Thompson mean?

Wikipedia describes Thompson as a variant of Thomson, "son of Thom", citing Quinn (2000), and notes an alternative origin as a place-name from the parish of Thompson in Norfolk (Redmonds, King and Hey, 2011) (Wikipedia). Mark Lower's Patronymica Britannica (1860) refers the reader from Thompson to Thomas, and also mentions parishes of the name in Norfolk and Dorset. Charles Bardsley's Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames (1901) calls it a baptismal name, "the son of Thome", meaning Thomas (both quoted on britishsurnames.uk).

The given name Thomas is traced to an Aramaic byname meaning "twin" (britishsurnames.uk). For most Thompson families the "son of Thomas" explanation is the likely one, but where a family is from Norfolk the place-name origin is possible, and only documents can decide. We have not been able to read the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland or Reaney and Wilson, so we do not quote them.

Why is there a P?

Bardsley says the "p" in Thompson is an intrusive sound, comparing it with Simpson for Simson. britishsurnames.uk makes the same point, describing the extra "p" as a phonetic development that does not stand for anything. In other words, the letter was added in speech and then in writing, and it was not part of the original name.

Origin and early records

Bardsley's earliest entries are for Thome as a given name used in descriptions such as "Eborard, son of Thome" (Cambridgeshire, 1273). The fixed forms with the "-son" ending that he quotes come later: the marriage of Thomas Thomson at St James, Clerkenwell, London, in 1602, and of Robert Thompson in the same parish in 1630. That is a late sample, and does not mean the name was new; the point is that we have not seen a firmly dated medieval example of the exact spelling "Thompson", and we do not claim one.

Spelling variants and related names

  • Thomson: the form without the P, recorded alongside Thompson in 1602 and 1630 in London and common across Britain.
  • Thome: the older short form of the given name that Bardsley gives as the root.

How common is Thompson?

britishsurnames.uk ranks Thompson 16th in Britain, with about 170,000 bearers (the page does not give the year of its data). Wikipedia says it was the 23rd most frequently reported surname in the 2010 US Census, at 0.23 per cent of the population.

In Yorkshire it is higher in the ranking. The 1881 census list for Yorkshire places Thompson ninth in the county, with 15,828 entries, ahead of Harrison (13,770) and Johnson (13,600). That is a transcription of a Victorian census, so counts are approximate. We found no reliable ranking for Hull alone, so we do not claim that Thompson is "most common in Hull".

Thompson in Hull and East Yorkshire

We did not find a Thompson family, firm, ship or building in Hull whose story we could confirm from a reliable source, so we do not offer one. The name was widespread in Yorkshire by Victorian times, so you can expect to meet it in Hull records, but a shared surname does not make people related.

Researching your Thompson family in Hull

  • Start from certificates, family papers and relatives. Use first names, ages, occupations and addresses, not the surname, to separate Thompson households, and check whether a record is spelled Thomson or Thompson before ruling it out.
  • The Hull History Centre has guides to Census Records, Wills, Trade Directories, Apprenticeship Records and Newspaper holdings.
  • For fishing-industry ancestors, its guides to Fishing Crew Lists and Skipper cards are the main sources, and our piece on Hull's maritime and fishing heritage gives the context. The Centre also runs a family history helpdesk; check its site for times.
  • The East Yorkshire Family History Society runs help desks in Hull and the East Riding, including volunteer advice at the Carnegie Heritage Centre in Hull.
  • If your Thompsons came from Norfolk, the place-name origin may apply, and parish records there will matter more than Hull ones.

More surname pages are in our names section. If you know of a long-dead Thompson with a documented Hull story and a source, please tell us.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, "Thompson (surname)", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_(surname) (accessed 6 November 2026), citing Quinn (2000) and Redmonds, King and Hey (2011).
  2. britishsurnames.uk, "Thompson: as described in historical dictionaries", quoting M. A. Lower (1860) and C. W. Bardsley (1901), britishsurnames.uk/surname/thompson/historic (accessed 6 November 2026).
  3. britishsurnames.uk, "Thompson", britishsurnames.uk/surname/thompson (accessed 6 November 2026).
  4. britishsurnames.uk, "Top surnames from the 1881 census in Yorkshire", britishsurnames.uk/1881census/yorkshire (accessed 6 November 2026).
  5. Hull History Centre, family history research guides, hullhistorycentre.org.uk (accessed 6 November 2026).
  6. East Yorkshire Family History Society, eyfhs.org.uk (accessed 6 November 2026).

Last checked 6 November 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.