Thom vs Thompson
American parents have registered 2,748 Thompsons since 1880, against 844 Thoms. Thompson is still ahead, with 64 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Thom Thompson
Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.
Who was ahead
Of the 128 years in which either name was published, Thompson for 106 years and Thom for 22 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.
- 1882–1945 Thompson ahead
- 1946–1948 Thom ahead
- 1949–1952 Thompson ahead
- 1958–1972 Thom ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1975–2025 Thompson ahead, apart from 2 short spells
11 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Thom | Thompson | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 844 | 2,748 |
| Most in one year | 32 | 76 |
| Babies in 2025 | under 5 | 64 |
| Estimated living today | 600 | 1,900 |
| Median age today | 61 | 21 |
| Peak year | 1961 | 2018 |
| Best rank | 1,406th boys | 1,937th boys |
| Rank in 2025 | unranked | 2,332nd |
| First recorded | 1917 | 1882 |
| Girls / boys | 0 / 844 | 23 / 2,725 |
A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.
Which name is older
Half of the Thoms alive today are over 61; half the Thompsons are over 21. That is 40 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Thom California (5.5×)
- Thompson Georgia (5.1×), North Carolina (3.3×), California (2.9×)
How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.
Both names abroad
Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.
| Country | Thom | Thompson |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 190 | 12 |
| Northern Ireland | 10 | 3 |
Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.
Compare something else
Related comparisons
Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Thom and Thompson.