Meaning and Origin of the Name Thomas
Aramaic "twin." The apostle Thomas came to be known as Doubting Thomas because he would not believe in the resurrection of Jesus until he had touched his wounds. Thomas shares his name with several other religious figures. To keep the church on his side, King Henry II of England appointed his friend Thomas Becket as the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Becket would not go along with what the king wanted because he was more loyal to his church than to his friend, Henry had Becket murdered on the doorstep of the cathedral. The 13th-century St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the great philosophers of the Middle Ages. St. Thomas More was executed when he refused to allow Henry VIII to interfere with the rulings of the church.
Two literary Thomases are English novelist Thomas Hardy and American poet and 1948 Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Stearns Eliot. Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States and one of the framers of the Constitution. Thomas has recently surged back into great popularity in England, where it was the number-one name during the 1990s and continues to go strong. However, it has drifted downward in popularity in the United States, though it still is a name that is commonly given to children.
Famous name: Thomas Edison (inventor)
Nicknames: Tam (Scottish), Thom, Tom, Tommie, Tommy
Variations of Thomas: Domas (Lusatian), Foma (Russian), Tamas (Hungarian), Toma (Romanian), Tomas (Irish Gaelic and Lithuanian), Tomas (Spanish), Tomasz (Polish), Tomaz (Slovenian), Tommaso (Italian), Tomos (Welsh), Toms (Latvian and German), Tuomo (Finnish)
See more Irish names.