An English surname, Tibbets comes from the Old French term ‘theobald’ and the German term ‘theudebald’ which both refer to very bold people. Variations in spelling for Tibbets include Tibbit, Tibbits, Tibbetts and Tibbet. In England the early Tibbets lived in Northampton. Over the centuries they resettled into Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Durham, Lancashire and the city of London. In Scotland the one main location for those with the Tibbets name is Midlothian County. Within the United States live in Massachusetts, California, Maine, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Famous: Luther C. Tibbets (19th century developer of seedless navel oranges in California), Paul W. Tibbets (commander and pilot of the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb in 1945 on Hiroshima, Japan) and Daniel Tibbets (developer of the first mobisode).