Tibbetts
A surname most often understood as a spelling variant of Tibbet/Tibbett, itself a pet form of Theobald.
The #5,327 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 47,223 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The name is generally treated as a variant of Tibbett or Tibbet, which English surname writers traced back to the medieval personal name Theobald. Theobald comes from Old High German elements meaning roughly “people” and “bold” or “brave,” so the deeper sense is “bold among the people.” Some 19th-century writers also linked related forms to the medieval name Isabel, but Tibbetts is most commonly explained as part of the Theobald family of surnames.
History
This surname appears in English records in several spellings, especially in the southeast and in later American usage. Nineteenth-century surname scholars grouped Tibbetts with a wide cluster of forms such as Tibbett, Tibbet, Tibbits, and Tebbutt, reflecting the very fluid spelling of medieval and early modern surnames. The modern American distribution reflects later English and colonial transmission.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older surname books loved this name because it sits in a big tangle of related forms, and even the same family could be recorded under several spellings over time.
From the historical record
“Tibb&tta, TlbUtta, Tlbbott, TlbbtU, Tibbetts, Tibbet. TIbbett, mbbltt, Tibbott— Bapt (0 'the son oflleobald ' ; (a) 'thesonoflsabel'Cv.TebbiU). The variations are almost innu- merable. They have run riot through”
— A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, with special American instances