Where the Rose name comes from

The surname Rose arose separately in English, Scottish, French, Danish, German and Jewish families. Most of them took it straight from the noun rose. Some first carried it because they lived beside rose bushes or under the sign of a rose, and others got it as a nickname for a rosy complexion.

A separate English line goes back to a Norman name of Germanic roots, probably built from Proto-Germanic *hrod, meaning fame, and *heid, meaning kind or type. That name reached England as Roese or Rohese. In England and Scotland, Rose can also be a variant of Ross. Some American families named Rose came from the Slovene Rože, a short form of Erazem, which comes from the Latin Erasmus. Hungarian Rozsa and Czech Roza, both with the same meaning, were also adapted into Rose.