Hutcheson
A Scottish and northern English surname meaning “son of Hutch,” with Hutch itself a pet form of Hugh.
The #4,266 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 37,104 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hutcheson is a patronymic surname built from Hutch, a medieval pet form of Hugh, plus -son meaning “son of.” Older surname writers also treated Hutcheson as a variant of Hutchison or Hutchinson, which fits the same basic origin. The underlying personal name Hugh comes from a Germanic root meaning “heart,” “mind,” or “spirit,” though the surname itself is more directly formed from the nickname form.
History
The name appears in medieval and later records in several spellings, including Hucheson and Hutchenson, reflecting the unstable spelling of the period. Nineteenth-century surname dictionaries generally grouped it with Hutchison and Hutchinson rather than treating it as a separate origin. It is found especially in Scotland and northern England, and later spread more widely through migration to Ireland and North America.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older writers sometimes noted that Hutchinson-like surnames were popularly reinterpreted in local dialects, leading to plenty of spelling drift across parish records.
From the historical record
“HUTCHESON-. See Hutchison. HUTCHINS. HUTCHINGS. Northern diminutives of Hugh. HUTCHINSON. See Hutchison. In England and Ireland this is the more fre- quent orthography. In the N. of England the name appears (but erroneously) to be regarded as a corruption of Richardson. Folks of Shields, p. 37.”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United KingdomNotable people named Hutcheson
- Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.