Simpkins
An English patronymic surname meaning “son of Simpkin,” with Simpkin being a diminutive of Simon.
The #3,107 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 26,650 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Simpkins is a patronymic built on Simpkin, with the final -s marking “son of” in many English surnames. Simpkin itself is a diminutive of Simon, a name that came into English through Old French from the Latin form of the biblical name Shimon. In older surname writing, the -kin element is a familiar diminutive ending, so the name originally had the sense of “little Simon” or “Simon’s child.”
History
19th-century surname writers regularly grouped Simpkins with other Simon-derived names such as Simpson, Simms, and Simmons. It appears chiefly as an English surname, especially in the Midlands and southern counties in historical records cited by earlier scholars. The spelling has also turned up in forms such as Simkin and Simpkinson, reflecting the usual variety of medieval and early modern surname spellings.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Several older surname dictionaries explicitly note that the -s in Simpkins works like a genitive or patronymic ending, just as in Wilkins.
From the historical record
“for Siml<in, q.v. SIMPKINS, SiMPKiN's(Son) \ v. Simpkin, SIMPKINSON, Simpkin'sSon; Simkin. SIMPLE (A.-Fr.-Lat.) 1 Simple [Fr. simple; Lat. simplex] (occ.) 2 for Semple, Sample, q.v. SIMPSON (with the common post-»j intrus. ■p) for Simson, q.v. SIMS, Sim's (Son) 1”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)