Thompson
Thompson is a boy's name that peaked in 2018, when it was the 1,937th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,332nd. About 1,900 Thompsons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 21.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Thompson boys named Thompson
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,748
- Estimated living today
- 1,900
- Median age today
- 21
- Peak year
- 2018
- Best rank
- 1,937th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,332nd
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 23 / 2,725
How old the living Thompsons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,748 babies given the name since 1882, about 1,900 are alive — 70 in every hundred. Roughly 850 of them are children and 260 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2004 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Thompsons
- Thompson Mann (1942–2019)American swimmer
- Thomas McKean Thompson McKennan (1794–1852)American politician
People named Thompson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Thompson is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Thompson is most concentrated in Georgia (5.1×), North Carolina (3.3×), California (2.9×), Texas (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2018
The most popular boys’ names the year Thompson peaked:
Thompson elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Thompson | 12 | 4,812th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Thompson | 3 | 395th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Thompson against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.