Talk:Thomas

List

Listing people who had the surname Thomas is futile enough, we don't need to start listing all the people with the same first name, too.

I did, however, notice that a few people were called Thomas of something, including Aquinas, so these could be included in the list of those known by one name... --Joy [shallot] 13:49, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I disagree, people may be interested in the origin of their name 1:09 November 25 2005

Moved all the personal names into the "Thomas" list of names

Since the article already described the other list List_of_people_by_name:_Tho#Thom, I moved all the personal names there.

Religious

However, in recent centuries the name has lost what religious sense that it held.

Ok, which was the religious sense that this name held? Moreover, which name used by religious figures along history has kept its religious sense? The quotation above seems to me to be unprecise and irrelevant. 201.6.119.5 15:00, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Thomas genealogy

I would like to see the Thomas family geneology added to this article. What do you think? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Agthoma (talk • contribs) 03:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

I don't believe there is a single 'Thomas' family; I think there are many, many families called Thomas. Thus, a 'Thomas family genealogy' would be impractical and meaningless to add to this article. Skittle 14:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Aramaic/ Hebrew

It says that it "originated from the Aramaic designation תום or Tôm." I can read Hebrew and תום is Tom in Hebrew. Is it supposed to say that Tom is Aramaic, or does Aramaic use the same characters as Hebrew? Just curious. Sir Akroy 00:56, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The Aramaic alphabet is the source of the Hebrew 'square script', and many varieties of Aramaic are written in this script. It's just better known as Hebrew. — Gareth Hughes 11:22, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The name Thomas can also be Greek.

Other abbreviations

What about the abbreviation Thos? I think it's still valid even though it's a bit antiquated.

Companies

Is the German tableware company Thomas significant enough to warrant an encyclopaedia entry? I think so (which is why I looked for one)16:24, 5 September 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Truthordare (talk • contribs)

Requested move 20 February 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Page views shows that Thomas the Apostle is remotely close. –wbm1058 (talk) 02:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

---

• Thomas → Thomas (disambiguation)Thomas (disambiguation)
• Thomas (name) → Thomas

– The given name is the primary topic. Nothing else is even remotely close. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:57, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose, Thomas the Apostle, Thomas (surname), and List of people with given name Thomas are all likely for "Thomas". 162 etc. (talk) 17:25, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
• I'd say anthroponymy is the primary topic, but it's not necessarily clear where to go from there. Do we consider the spread of clicks towards the various split anthroponymy topics an indication that we need a broad concept article? --Joy (talk) 08:25, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

formatting

Recently I noticed an editor removing items because they're not mononyms. However, WikiNav view of clickstreams shows that these links are indeed often used by readers. This list sounds like another casualty of a broken application of WP:NAMELIST - instead of making navigation more efficient, this segmentation of lists makes it worse. --Joy (talk) 09:50, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

@Clarityfiend with regard to , you appear to be contradicting the content of the article Thomas Aquinas, which seems to commonly refer to the topic as simply "Thomas". --Joy (talk) 11:15, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

That is one weak argument. Of course he's referred to as Thomas in his own article. No article refers to any person by their full name after the first or second time. MOS:DABNAME applies: "should be listed in the main disambiguation list of the disambiguation page only if they are frequently referred to simply by the single name". That is SOP. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:05, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

No, MOS typically recommends to refer to persons with their surname rather than given name in an article after the full name has been presented (with some exceptions such as direct quotes or persons who were most commonly known only by the mononym). In this case, I completely agree with Joy that removing one of the most visited pages from this dab for a simplistic interpretation of partial title match is missing the entire point of disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 12:53, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Note, the same sort of thing happened recently at Humboldt. older ≠ wiser 13:01, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

The distinction here is that the "Aquinas" part would have been a conventional surname to be consistently used like that. However, it is not - this person was named Thomas of Aquino (which is a place), which morphs into Aquinas in the original foreign language, at a time when surnames weren't as widespread. It seems to be conventional for them to be referred to as Thomas as their proper name. This is why this topic is utterly eligible to be listed as just Thomas. --Joy (talk) 13:53, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

No. Lincoln is Abraham Lincoln, but that's not the case here. Even if you say Thomas and add the qualifier Roman Catholic, that doesn't narrow it down to Aquinas. How about Thomas Becket? Thomas More? A dab page isn't intended to list just anybody simply because they are well-known. older ≠ wiser's argument that pageviews should take precedence is odd. Where is that in the MOS (or anywhere else) as far as dab pages are concerned? Clarityfiend (talk) 18:44, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing English Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead. The page traffic of persons who visit the Thomas disambiguation page and proceed to Thomas Aquinas is prima facie evidence that a substantial number of people are looking for Aquinas by starting with Thomas. older ≠ wiser 18:53, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Add, it is much the same reason that people known by a mononym should be included on a dab even where the article title may be disambiguated to obscure the mononym due to naming conventions. older ≠ wiser 18:57, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand your argument there, because it doesn't seem to relate to what I was saying before. This isn't a case of natural disambiguation being just a combination of two names, and then we have to weigh how much each of these individual names is relevant and whether listing them would just be listing them simply because they're well-known.

Rather, it's a case of natural disambiguation being a combination of one term we conventionally recognize as a "name", and one term that is not a name in itself, but a natural disambiguation marker. I'm not sure how to explain it better.

Maybe middle name is a good parallel? We don't disambiguate by middle name, because people don't typically use just the middle name to refer to a person. In this case, people refer to this person using his given name, Thomas. If they do happen to refer to him as "Aquinas", it sounds like they're referring to his surname, but that's not actually what it was. It would be more like using the term as a nickname or a sobriquet.

In addition, this is especially confusing because Aquinas (disambiguation) lists other people using the same name+marker. At the same time, in all those examples where English is used, we see that they add a surname to it. --Joy (talk) 11:27, 4 March 2026 (UTC)