Origin of Thompson and Reidy Names

Thompson

This famous name is one of the patronymic forms of the name Thom or Tom, diminutives of the male personal name Thomas. The given name is of Biblical origin, being an Aramaic byname meaning "twin", borne by one of Christ's disciples; in England the name Thomas was found only as the name of a priest before the Norman Conquest of 1066, but thereafter became one of the most popular male personal names, generating a wide variety of surnames. The patronymic forms from diminutives, such as Thomson (the Scottish form) and Thompson, found mainly in England and Northern Ireland, appear in the 14th Century, the first recording being from Scotland. The intrusive "p" of the English and Irish forms was for easier pronunciation, although there are two old wives tales that the 'p' meant 'prisoner', or in Ireland 'Protestant', both are incorrect. Examles of early recordings include John Thompson in the Charters of the Abbey of Whitby, Yorkshire, in 1349, and Thomas Tomson, who married Elizabeth Harris at the church of St Jon the Evangelist, Dublin, on December 12th 1631. The earliest Coat of Arms is probably the following granted in Yorkshire in 1559. Per fess silver and black, with a fesse embattled between three falcons counterchanged, belled, beaked and jessed in gold. The crest is an arm holding a gold truncheon . One of the very earliest settlers in the New World, was William Thompson recorded as 'living at Elizabeth Cittie, Virginea', before February 16th 1623. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of John Thomson, which was dated 1318, in the "Annals of Scotland", during the reign of King Robert 1 of Scotland, known as "The Bruce", 1306 - 1329. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax.

Source The Internet Surname Database accessed July 20, 2010

Reidy

The name has been recorded as REIDY,RIEDY, REEDY, and READY . These surnames are derived from the Irish name O'RIADA.

O'Reidy, Mulready.  Members of the Dalcassian sept of O'Riada are to be found in considerable numbers in all the three counties of west Munster, particularly Clare and Kerry; in 1659 the "census" enumerators found them chiefly in counties Kerry and Limerick. The Four Masters under date 1129 describe the chief of the sept as king of Aradh, a designation applied to the O'Donegans up to 1100 and to O'Brien in the fifteenth century.

Matheson states that in 1890 Reidy occured in birth registrations as a synonym of Roddy (q.v.), though there is no relation between the names.  Reidy, however, does not appear ever to have been treated as interchangeable with Reddy or as an abbreviation of Mulready, which is a rare name belonging to a sept of the Ui Maine, located in the southern part of Co. Roscommon bordering that part of east Galway known as Keogh's country, from which in fact they were gradually displaced by the MacKeoughs.  They are still to be found in that part of Connacht and in Co. Clare.

Source: MacLysaght, Edward.  More Irish Families.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pg 180.