The history of your name

The THOMPSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 644,368 19 0.239 2,389
United States (1880 census) 159,171 11 0.318 3,183
Change since 1880 +485197 -8 -0.079 -794
Other Countries
Australia 29,931 11 0.183 1,831
United Kingdom 125,559 14 0.273 2,734
Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Classification and Origin of THOMPSON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the THOMPSON surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the THOMPSON surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of THOMPSON in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 467,038 72.48
Black/African American 145,176 22.53
Mixed Race 11,470 1.78
White (Hispanic) 10,439 1.62
Native American/Alaskan 7,410 1.15
Asian/Pacific 2,835 0.44

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the THOMPSON surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of THOMPSON in historical publications

THOMPSON. See Thomas. There are, however, parishes in cos. Norfolk and Dorset so called. Almost 300 London traders bear this name, which, according to the Registrar-General, stands t\\'eutyfirst in the roll of connnon surnames, being rarer than Edwards, and more common than White. See Prelim. Dissertation.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to THOMPSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as THOMPSON.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for THOMPSON

The following words are slight variants of THOMPSON that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.