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Hodgson Surname: Meaning, Origin & Hull Research

Updated 12 Nov 2026

Hodgson is a northern English surname, usually explained as "son of Hodge", where Hodge was a medieval pet form of Roger. It is far more common in Yorkshire than the national figures suggest. We found no documented Hull family or firm called Hodgson that we could verify, so the page covers the meaning, the evidence for it, a minority theory and how to research the name.

What does Hodgson mean?

The standard explanation is that Hodgson is a patronymic: Hodge plus son, with Hodge a Middle English pet form of Roger. Wikipedia attributes this to Reaney's A Dictionary of English Surnames and to Hanks's work, and Charles Bardsley's 1901 Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames says the same: a baptismal name, "the son of Roger", from the nickname Hodge, with the "d" an intrusive sound as in Rodgers (Wikipedia; britishsurnames.uk). Mark Lower's 1860 Patronymica Britannica calls it "the son of Hodge or Roger" and notes that in the north it was pronounced differently from the southern Hodson or Hudson.

We have not been able to read the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland itself, so we cite it only through the secondary sources above.

A minority theory

Wikipedia also reports a suggestion by the family historian Geoffrey Hodgson, based on the distribution of the name and on DNA, that some Hodgsons may instead derive from a Norse-Irish name, "son of Oddgeir". This is a family-history website's argument rather than a dictionary entry, and the standard view remains "son of Hodge". Neither view tells you anything about an individual family: surnames became hereditary centuries after any Viking settlement, and a surname's origin does not prove descent.

Origin and early records

Bardsley's examples include several from the Yorkshire poll tax of 1379: Johannes Hodgeson, Johannes Hoggeson, Thomas Hogge and Ebbota Hoggese (all quoted on the britishsurnames.uk historical page). The spellings with Hogg- show that the first part was also written as Hogge. Lower adds that the name is old at Newcastle upon Tyne and that a Northumberland family traced a pedigree to 1424; we have not checked those claims.

Spelling variants and related names

  • Hodgeson and Hoggeson: spellings in the 1379 return.
  • Hodson and Hudson: Lower says the name takes these forms in the south. They are related names, but not every Hudson or Hodson is a Hodgson.

How common is Hodgson?

britishsurnames.uk ranks Hodgson 216th in Britain, with about 35,600 bearers (the page does not give the year of its data). Wikipedia, citing the same site, gave 173rd in 1881 and 206th in 1998.

The name is stronger in Yorkshire. The 1881 census list for Yorkshire places Hodgson 37th in the county, with 7,771 entries. That is a transcription, so counts are approximate. We found no reliable ranking for Hull alone, so we do not give one, and we do not claim it is "most common in Hull".

Hodgson in Hull and East Yorkshire

We did not find a Hodgson family, firm or building in Hull whose story we could confirm from a source we could read, so we do not offer one. What the evidence does show is that the name was established in Yorkshire by the late fourteenth century, which makes it a name you can reasonably expect to meet in the records of Hull and the East Riding.

Researching your Hodgson family in Hull

  • Work back from certificates and relatives. Because spellings vary, search for Hodgson, Hodgeson and Hodson in indexes, and check the original page where you can.
  • The Hull History Centre has guides to Census Records, Wills, Trade Directories, Apprenticeship Records and Newspaper holdings.
  • For seafaring ancestors, see its guides to Fishing Crew Lists and Skipper cards, and our piece on Hull's maritime and fishing heritage.
  • The East Yorkshire Family History Society runs help desks in Hull and the East Riding.
  • If your Hodgsons came to Hull from further north, remember the name is also recorded in the North East (Lower mentions Newcastle upon Tyne), so do not assume a link to any one Yorkshire line.

More surname pages are in our names section. If you know of a long-dead Hodgson with a documented Hull story and a source, please tell us.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, "Hodgson", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodgson (accessed 6 November 2026), citing Reaney, Hanks and G. Hodgson's family-history site.
  2. britishsurnames.uk, "Hodgson: as described in historical dictionaries", quoting M. A. Lower (1860) and C. W. Bardsley (1901), britishsurnames.uk/surname/hodgson/historic (accessed 6 November 2026).
  3. britishsurnames.uk, "Hodgson", britishsurnames.uk/surname/hodgson (accessed 6 November 2026).
  4. britishsurnames.uk, "Top surnames from the 1881 census in Yorkshire", britishsurnames.uk/1881census/yorkshire (accessed 6 November 2026).
  5. Hull History Centre, family history research guides, hullhistorycentre.org.uk (accessed 6 November 2026).
  6. East Yorkshire Family History Society, eyfhs.org.uk (accessed 6 November 2026).

Last checked 6 November 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.