Explore the Family Name Thomas

The meaning of Thomas

1. English, French, Walloon, Breton, German, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Greek, West Indian (mainly Haiti and Jamaica), and African (mainly Tanzania and Nigeria): from the personal name Thomas, of Biblical (New Testament) origin, from Aramaic t’ōm’a, a byname meaning ‘twin’. It was borne by one of the disciples of Christ, known for his scepticism about Christ’s resurrection (John 20:24–9). The Th- spelling is organic, the initial letter of the name in the Greek New Testament being a theta. The English pronunciation as t rather than th- is the result of French influence from an early date. In Britain, the surname is widely distributed throughout the country, but especially common in Wales and Cornwall. In North America, the English form of the surname has absorbed many cognates from other languages (e.g. Assyrian/Chaldean or Arabic Toma and Tuma, Albanian Toma and Thoma, and Slavic surnames listed in 3 below), and their patronymics and other derivatives (e.g. Polish Tomaszewski and Slovenian Tomažič; see Tomazic). In France, this surname is most common in the Vosges and Brittany. The name Thomas is also found among Christians in southern India (compare Machan, Mammen, and Oommen), but since South Indians traditionally do not have hereditary surnames, the southern Indian name was in most cases registered as such only after immigration of its bearers to the US. This surname is also very common among African Americans. 2. Native American (e.g. Navajo): adoption of the English personal name Thomas (see 1 above) as a surname. 3. Germanized or Americanized form of Polish Tomas, Tomasz, and Tomaś, Sorbian Tomaš (see also 4 below), Croatian Tomaš and Tomas, Slovenian Tomaš and Tomaž, Czech and Slovak Tomáš, all meaning ‘Thomas’. 4. Germanized or Americanized form of Sorbian Domaš: from the personal name Domaš, a derivative of the Old Sorbian name Domasław based on the Old Slavic element domъ ‘home’, but later associated with the Biblical name Thomas (see 1 above, compare 3 above). History: The surname Thomas of French origin (see 1 above) is listed in the register of Huguenot ancestors recognized by the Huguenot Society of South Carolina.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.

What do people with the surname Thomas have in common?

Spoiler alert: it's complicated. People with the same last name are usually no more genetically similar than a randomly sampled group of people from the same population. That said, people with the same surname are more likely to have similar ancestries than randomly sampled individuals. The reason is the tendency of people with similar cultural or geographical backgrounds to preferentially mate with one another. That's why people who share a surname may be more likely to share traits and tendencies in common than people within the general population. Check out the percentages below to see the prevalences of tastes, habits, and traits of people with your surname compared with prevalences among 23andMe users.