Is National Thomas Day the same as St Thomas's Day?

No. The apostle's feast falls on July 3 in the Roman and Syrian Catholic churches, on December 21 in the Western tradition and on October 6 in the Greek church. National Thomas Day is a separate, secular name day.

Is it connected to National Thomas Jefferson Day?

No. Thomas Jefferson's birthday is April 13 and is written into United States law at 36 U.S.C. 141, which directs an annual presidential proclamation. National Thomas Day has no comparable standing.

National Thomas Day

Next celebratedThursday, July 22, 2027

Doubting Thomas is a dictionary headword, filed alongside peeping Tom and lazy Susan. July 22 greets the Thomases while plain Tom quietly disappears: thirty-one boys got it in England and Wales in 2025.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJuly 22

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

“Two newsrooms marked the same July date, two years apart.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A day carried by use rather than by record.

The documented record for National Thomas Day begins with the day already in use. The British regional newsrooms Lancs Live and Birmingham Live each marked July 22 as National Thomas Day on their own accounts, in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Neither identified an originator or a first year, and a search for an establishing announcement, registrar entry or proclamation returned none.

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INTRO

Which English name fell for seventy years and returned at number one

Thomas spent seventy years falling out of fashion in England and Wales. The slide bottomed out at fortieth place.

Then the name climbed all the way back. By 1994 it was the most popular boys' name in England and Wales, the only time it has held first place in the ONS series.

The name behind the day has a paper trail running back centuries. The day itself has almost none.

ORIGINS

Thomas Day history

INTRODUCTION

Thomas began as a description rather than a name. In Aramaic the word Teʾoma means twin, and the Greek Didymos means exactly the same thing.

John's gospel identifies the apostle as Thomas, called the Twin. Syrian tradition goes a step further and calls him Judas Thomas, which reads as Judas the Twin. On that reading the personal name is the Judas part, and Thomas is the label attached to it.

CHAPTER 01

The name the Conquest brought

Before 1066 the name barely registered in England. The Online Etymology Dictionary reports it found only as the name of a priest.

After the Conquest that reversed completely. Thomas became one of the most common given names in English, common enough that it could stand for one of the populace taken at random.

CHAPTER 02

Five names and a whole country

The grip lasted for centuries. Among children aged five and under in the 1851 census, Thomas ranked in the top five boys' names in nearly every county of England and Wales.

Four places held out. Thomas fell outside the top five in Merionethshire, Anglesey, Norfolk and Suffolk, and in East Anglia the older favourite was James.

CHAPTER 03

The fall and the comeback

The twentieth century pulled the name down, and then handed it back. The ONS puts Thomas in a small group it calls comeback names, all of them drawn from the top twenty of 1904.

Six names made that list, each back in the top twenty by 2015. Four of them, William, George, Henry and Harry, carry royal associations, and James had never left it at all. Thomas is the one the ONS files simply as biblical.

CHAPTER 04

Where the observance actually starts

The observance is far harder to trace than the name it honours. Searches for an establishing announcement or a registrar entry come back empty, and the date carries no recorded explanation.

Lancs Live marked July 22 in 2023, telling readers to be extra nice to any Thomas they knew. Birmingham Live did the same the following year. Both treated the date as already settled, and neither explained where it came from.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Thomas Day

IDENTITY

About four million Indians trace their church to the apostle Thomas.

Britannica reports about four million Thomas Christians in India in the early 21st century, mainly in Kerala, who by ancient belief and canonical doctrine trace their origins to the apostle's arrival at Malankara in 52 CE. It also states plainly that the historicity of that arrival cannot be verified, while inscriptions on stone crosses and copper plates place Christians on the Malabar Coast by the 2nd or 3rd century.

VOCABULARY

The name turned into an ordinary English word

Merriam-Webster carries doubting Thomas as a dictionary headword, defined as an incredulous or habitually doubtful person. Wordsmith dates the earliest documented use to 1877 and groups it with peeping Tom and lazy Susan as words coined from proper names.

FORMS

The nickname is fading while the name holds

Plain Tom has all but vanished from birth registers in England and Wales, ranking 976th in 2025 with thirty-one boys given it. A day that greets Toms and Thomases together is therefore saluting a short form that new parents have quietly moved away from.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Thomas Day by the Numbers

79%: Medieval men sharing five poll-tax names
13 of 13: ONS decades with Thomas in the top 100
1,344: Boys named Thomas in 2025, England and Wales
2,105,675: US boys named Thomas since 1926

GOOD TO KNOW

What English made out of Tom

Tommy

A British soldier, recorded from 1884. It comes from Thomas Atkins, the sample name used to fill in army forms since 1815.

Tom, Dick, and Harry

Attested from 1734 for people taken at random. Tom had already served as shorthand for a common man since the late 1300s.

Tom Fool

The oldest coinage in this group, appearing in the mid-1300s in the spelling Thom Fole.

Tom Thumb

Recorded in English from the 1570s, which makes it the second-oldest dated entry on this list.

Peeping Tom

Earliest documented use in 1769. It comes from the Coventry legend of Lady Godiva, in which a tailor named Tom was the one who looked.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Thomas Day Around the World

Sweden and Norway

both keep the name day for Tomas on December 21, the single most common Thomas date across Europe's name-day calendars

Austria

runs five separate name days for Thomas, on January 28, June 22, July 3, July 25 and December 29

Wales

the short form overtook the full name in 2025, with Tommy 28th and Thomas 42nd; in England that order was reversed

United States

the five names that dominated medieval England, John, Robert, William, Richard and Thomas, all still sit inside the American top nine for births since 1926

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Thomas Day

Message the Thomases in your life

Send a note to every Thomas, Tom and Tommy you know. Naming the individual person is the entire mechanism of a name day.

LOOK

Look up where the name stands now

Open the official registration figures and find Thomas in the current table. The ONS boys' names dataset gives the rank and the exact count for England and Wales.

CHECK

Check which Thomas day you actually mean

Three church calendars keep the apostle's feast on three different dates, and none of them is today. Confirm which one you are working from before you put anything on a noticeboard.

TRACE

Trace a Thomas through your own family tree

Census and parish records make this name unusually easy to follow backwards. Start with a nineteenth-century census return and work through the generations from there.

COLLECT

Collect the words the name produced

English built a small vocabulary out of Thomas and Tom. See how many of them you already use without thinking about the name underneath.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Thomas Day?

1 / 8

What does the name Thomas mean?

Answer

No. No statute, proclamation or official recognition for it was located, so it is an unofficial observance and not a day off.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

19sources

8primary records

12independently dated

Primary records

Office for National Statistics1904 to 2024

Top 100 baby names in England and Wales: historical data

Official ten-yearly rankings of boys' and girls' names registered in England and Wales from 1904 to 2024, the dataset in which Thomas falls to fortieth place and later takes first.

National Thomas Day

Community Origin

A day carried by use rather than by record.

The name the Conquest brought

Five names and a whole country

The fall and the comeback

Where the observance actually starts

The name turned into an ordinary English word

The nickname is fading while the name holds

Tommy

Tom, Dick, and Harry

Tom Fool

Tom Thumb

Peeping Tom

Sweden and Norway

Austria

Wales

United States

Message the Thomases in your life

Look up where the name stands now

Check which Thomas day you actually mean

Trace a Thomas through your own family tree

Collect the words the name produced

How well do you know National Thomas Day?

What does the name Thomas mean?

Is National Thomas Day a public holiday?

Is National Thomas Day the same as St Thomas's Day?

Is it connected to National Thomas Jefferson Day?

What does the name Thomas mean?

Related holidays

National Jude Day

National John Day

National Tim Day

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