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Robinson Surname: Meaning, Origin & Hull Research

Updated 10 Nov 2026

Robinson is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Robin", where Robin was a medieval pet form of Robert. It is a very common name in Yorkshire, but we found no documented Hull family, firm or place called Robinson that we could verify, so this page covers the meaning, the early records and the practical business of researching a Robinson ancestor in Hull.

What does Robinson mean?

Robinson is formed from Robin, a pet form of Robert, plus son. Robert is a Germanic name, usually explained as meaning "fame-bright" (britishsurnames.uk). Charles Bardsley's Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames (1901) calls it a baptismal name, "the son of Robert", from the nickname Rob and the diminutive Robin, and Mark Lower's Patronymica Britannica (1860) has "the son of Robin, or Robert" (both quoted on britishsurnames.uk). We have not been able to read the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland or Reaney and Wilson, so we do not quote them.

The medieval given name Robin was common long before it was a bird's name. Bardsley remarks that the bird, "robin-redbreast", later took the name and replaced the older word "ruddock" so completely that the older name was forgotten.

Origin and early records

Bardsley's examples of the name and its relatives include:

  • Dera Robins in Cambridgeshire in 1273;
  • Roger Robynsoun in Yorkshire in 1379, from the poll tax return;
  • Roger and Adam Robyn-man, also Yorkshire in 1379;
  • a baptism of William, son of Arthur Robinsonne, at St Peter, Cornhill, London, in 1606.

The 1379 return shows the surname already in use in Yorkshire in its "Robin's son" form, Robynsoun. Some of the other early examples may still have been bynames rather than fixed family names.

Spelling variants and related names

  • Robynsoun and Robinsonne: older spellings recorded by Bardsley.
  • Robin, Robins and Robyn: shorter forms from the same given name, as in Bardsley's examples.

How common is Robinson?

britishsurnames.uk ranks Robinson 14th in Britain, with about 177,000 bearers (the page does not give the year of its data).

It is much more prominent in Yorkshire. The 1881 census list for Yorkshire on britishsurnames.uk puts Robinson fourth in the county, with 20,011 entries, after Smith, Taylor and Wilson. That is a transcription of a Victorian census, so counts are approximate. We found no reliable ranking for Hull alone, so we do not claim one.

Robinson in Hull and East Yorkshire

We did not find a Robinson family, firm or building in Hull whose story we could confirm from a source we could read, and we will not invent one. Robinson was a name given in many places, so there is no reason to expect a single Hull lineage.

There is one literary link. In Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, the hero sets sail from Kingston upon Hull (Wikipedia gives August 1651 as the voyage's date in the story). It is fiction, and Robinson is Crusoe's given name rather than a Hull family name, so it says nothing about real Robinson families (Wikipedia).

Researching your Robinson family in Hull

As with every very common name, the surname alone cannot take you far. These steps help:

  • Begin with certificates, family papers and what relatives remember, and use first names, ages, occupations and addresses to separate Robinson households.
  • Use the census, working back through the decades. The Hull History Centre has guides to Census Records and Wills.
  • Its guides to Trade Directories, Apprenticeship Records and Newspaper holdings help you establish where a Robinson worked and lived.
  • For seafaring Robinsons, see the Centre's 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, including volunteer advice at the Carnegie Heritage Centre.

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

Sources

  1. britishsurnames.uk, "Robinson", britishsurnames.uk/surname/robinson (accessed 6 November 2026).
  2. britishsurnames.uk, "Robinson: as described in historical dictionaries", quoting C. W. Bardsley (1901) and M. A. Lower (1860), britishsurnames.uk/surname/robinson/historic (accessed 6 November 2026).
  3. britishsurnames.uk, "Top surnames from the 1881 census in Yorkshire", britishsurnames.uk/1881census/yorkshire (accessed 6 November 2026).
  4. Wikipedia, "Robinson Crusoe", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe (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.