Batson
An English surname meaning “son of Bat,” with Bat as a short form of Bartholomew.
The #3,972 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 34,493 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Batson is a patronymic surname built from the nickname Bat plus the suffix -son, meaning “son of Bat.” In the older surname dictionaries, Bat is treated as a shortened form of Bartholomew, so the name ultimately points back to Bartholomew, from the Hebrew name meaning “son of Talmai.” The surname can therefore be understood as “son of Bartholomew’s descendant” in the loose medieval sense, though the practical meaning is simply “Bat’s son.”
History
The name is recorded in English sources from at least the late medieval and early modern periods, and it appears in historical registers in counties such as Lancashire and Wiltshire. Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century surname scholars consistently grouped Batson with other Bartholomew derivatives such as Batt, Bates, and Batty. It remained a fairly localized English surname and later spread more widely through migration, especially to North America.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Several old surname dictionaries explicitly point Batson back to Bartholomew rather than to the animal-name “bat.”
From the historical record
“written TJattesford, Batisford, &c. BATSON. See Barlholomew. BATT. BxVTTS. BATTSON. See Bartholomew. BAY 21”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom