Thomas

1,506,606 people in America carry this name — ranked #12 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Baby Boomers.

Say it TAH muhs

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

T AA1 M AH0 S — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 1,506,606 2020 Census
  • Rank #12 Very common
  • Per 100,000 498.8 about 1 in 220 people
  • As a surname 734,345 ranked #16 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Thomas

Aramaic in origin, reading literally as “twin”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Thomas through the years

2,333,549 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1952, with 48,726 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Thomas

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Thomas Steven — runs together
  • Thomas Timothy — same opening
  • Thomas Stephen — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name and a surname

Thomas is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

Boys or girls: who is called Thomas?

99.9% men
1,484 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 87.0%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 4.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.9%
  • Two or more races — 2.3%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.7%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Names with the same rhythm as Thomas

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

This name in other languages

  • Tom English
  • Tome Spanish
  • Toma Ill
  • Tomas Span.|Ill
  • Thoma Wall
  • Tuomas Finn
  • Tomasa Spanish
  • Tomasz Polish
  • Thumas O.|Fr
  • Tommasso Italian

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Aramaic origin