Thompson

At the 2020 census, 640,099 Americans bore the surname Thompson — 23rd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 467.

By the numbers

People: 640,099
Rank: 23rd
How common: 1 in 467
Per 100,000: 214.2

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

Variant of Thomson, from originally meaning "son of Thomas". In some instances of people so named; also an anglicisation of the Gaelic name MacTamhais, meaning "son of Thomas".

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Thompson described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 67.1%
Black, not Hispanic 23.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Thompson

Emma Thompson (born 1959)English actress and screenwriter
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005)American journalist and author
Ken Thompson (born 1943)American programmer and computer scientist, co-creator of the Unix operating system
Tessa Thompson (born 1983)American actress
Elaine Thompson-Herah (born 1992)Jamaican athletics competitor
Klay Thompson (born 1990)American basketball player
Fred Thompson (1942–2015)American politician and actor
Lea Thompson (born 1961)American actress

People named Thompson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Thompson

Also a first name

Thompson has been given to 2,748 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 2018. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.