Tompkins Surname Meaning & Coat of Arms

Clerks wrote Thompkins in many ways, and Tompkins is one that stuck. The family name meaning is “The son of little Thom”, the same as for Thompkins.

Heraldry and the Tompkins name

Looking for a Tompkins coat of arms? Arms were granted to families, not to surnames, and our research shows which heraldic tradition fits yours.

A variant of Thompkins

Tompkins drops the “h” of Thompkins, a simplification that clerks often made. Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them. The same family of names includes Tomkins.

The 2010 US Census counted 24,056 people named Tompkins, ranking it number 1,485 among American surnames. Research your Tompkins family history with a full surname report and painted coat of arms.