# Thorndike (surname)

Source: https://namelineage.com/surname/thorndike/  
Publisher: Name Lineage. Counts from the US Census Bureau; origin and etymology from Wiktionary; bearers from Wikidata. Data updated 2026-11-11.

A surname from Old English.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Origin | English |
| Type | place, taken from where an ancestor lived or came from |
| People in the US (2010 Census) | 556 |
| US rank (2010) | 39,555 of 162,253 |
| How often | about 1 in every 555,298 people |
| Change since 2000 | +0.4% (554 in 2000) |
| Pronunciation | not recorded |
| Variant spellings | Thorndyke |

## Etymology

Topographic surname for someone who lived by a sort of palisade made with thornbushes, from Old English þorn (“thornbush”) + dīc (“ditch; dike”). The town was named after Israel Thorndike, a landowner.

## Who carries it

Share of people named Thorndike in the 2010 US Census by the Census's own race and ethnicity groups. The Census suppresses a share when the count behind it is small.

| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| White (not Hispanic) | 93% |
| Hispanic or Latino (any race) | 6.8% |
| Asian and Pacific Islander | 0.0% |
| American Indian and Alaska Native | 0.0% |

## Where

Wikidata records people named Thorndike in the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

## People named Thorndike

- Edward Thorndike, American psychologist
- Sybil Thorndike, British actress (1882–1976)
- Lynn Thorndike, American historian of medieval science and alchemy (1882–1965)
- Russell Thorndike, British actor and novelist (1885-1972)

## Similar surnames

Thornton, Trent, Trinidad, Tarrant, Tarantino, Trantham, Taranto, Turrentine, Trentham.

## How to read these numbers

A Census count is people alive and counted in 2010, not births, and names occurring fewer than 100 times are not published at all. Ethnicity shares are the Census's own categories.