esoteriic.com

 

I'm not a language expert but I do enjoy reading about language and how it has evolved. So I put this interest to good use by examining a common misspelled family name. I try to examine the possible evolution of spelling and pronunciation of Thomson, or at least compare spellings and pronunciations with other Germanic languages. I argue that Thomson is the correct spelling while Thompson is a strange mistake that I can't figure out how it came about it.

 

Etymology:

 

Thomson has a typical patronymic form where the adoption of the subject's father's first name is the surname (typical of Norse family names). This name has likely Scandinavian roots. Although the progenitor name, Thomas, is older and there is a suggestion that the surname has a more general origin: possibly a crusader surname. The first known record of the name is 1318, in the Annals of Scotland (according to that link).

 

 

 

Thomas (Apparently: from Aramaic meaning twin). Often shortened to Tom and Thom.

Son (literally a male child of the prefix name)

 

This suggests that Thomasson may be the first such spelling and that Tomson and Thomson should also be acceptable.

 

Language comparison

(spelling of son)

 

English: son

Swedish: son

Danish: søn

Norwegian (bokmål): sønn

Norwegian (Nynorsk): son

Icelandic: sonur

Anglo-Saxon: sunu (nominative, accusative, singular... only the last letter changes for the other cases)

 

 

Given the supposed first recorded spelling (1318) and the 'son' ending, a possible Anglo-Saxon origin (ie Old English) seems unlikely. Similar reasoning suggest that Danish origin is also unlikely. Clearly the name isn't from modern Norwegian (bokmål), that can be ruled out from the time with which the language took form; note that Danish is practically the same as bokmål.

 

Nynorsk which despite the literal meaning (new Norwegian) is actually an older 'truer' form of the language, so this gives some indication to what the Old Norse language would have looked like. Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon also give a good indication to Old Norse. The -ur ending in Icelandic seems to be a common ending of many Icelandic words, although I'm not entirely sure what it means, but I believe it is a generic suffix (could be a masculine suffix, my knowledge of Icelandic is very limited).

 

This suggests that the name Thomson has etymological roots with old Norse and should be consistent with the languages found in Norway, Sweden and probably Iceland when the name was first recorded. Variants of Thomson are found in all three of these countries in present day, which obviously tells us there is a common root but it doesn't suggest which country it came from. Possibly originating in the crusades but the form is clearly of Old Norse origins. Given that the Vikings visited Scotland many times and that the royal families were often married to each other it isn't surprising that we take influence from them. However, it seems unlikely that the Thomson surname was exported from Scotland to the North.

 

 

Phonology:

 

O (in son):

 

English: the 'o' of son sounds more like a 'u', eg sun.

Anglo-Saxon: 'o' sounds like it does in modern English but that doesn't really matter as the spelling of son is different: sunu -- the u sounds like the u in put, which suggests that modern English has taken this vowel sound directly from its progenitor.

Swedish: the 'o' of son sounds like English 'oh'. There are many spellings of this sound in English, for me the 'ow' in own or 'oa' in moan all sound very similar.

Nynorsk: The pronunciation is apparently: /så:n/  . My best guess is that it sounds like Swedish, and even bokmål. So see the above sentence.

Icelandic/ Old Norse: Same as Swedish.

 

TH:

The 'th' sound in Thomson has a silent 'h' which is familiar to modern German, Norwegian (bokmål), Swedish. Some spellings drop the 'h' in Scandinavian variants.

Words that have 'th' in English have two possible pronunciations (eg, thin and then).  Both forms of pronuciation appear in Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and Icelandic. However, this pronunciation is strangely not used.

 

 

The other letters are not contentious in their pronunciation in any of the languages (to the best of my knowledge). Eg, The first 'o' (in Thom) appears to be consistent with all languages.

 

The 'th' and 'o' (in son) sounds are consistent with modern Nordic languages, although not really true of modern English. The older Nordic languages have a 'th' sound that is separate from 't', which suggests a slight inconsistency of Thomson with Old Norse but pronunciation has likely evolved (for one) and the difference between 'th' and 't' may have varied by dialect or even varied from word to word.

 

The modern English pronunciation of Thomson doesn't seem to fit well with the rules of spelling and pronunciation. However, the spellings of the Nordic versions of Thomson (eg Thomsen, Thomsson etc) appear to be consistent with the pronunciation of the modern Nordic languages.

 

 

 

Conclusively, the variant Thomson is etymologically and phonological sound. Thompson, however, seems to be an aberration of all the languages (including modern English). The name Thomson is apparently the 4th most common surname in Scotland, the variant Thompson is far down the list. In England, the popularity of both versions is lower

than in Scotland but the Thompson variant is more common than Thomson.

 

Despite this I'm left wondering why people always spell my name wrong. The Thomson variant is simpler to spell and if one was lazy you'd think they'd default to that version (especially in Scotland). Etymology favours Thomson and there is also a stronger phonological basis for that variant; trying to spell the name as it sounds should at least lead to Tomson or Thomson but (most definitely) not ThomPson.

 

 

 

Sources:

Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer

Google translate to check spelling in the modern Germanic languages.