Roß

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from an occupational byname for horse-handlers or drivers; also linked to HROD- names and Ross- compounds

/ʁoːs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Roß is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 55th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 735as Roth(measured from records)
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 868as Ross
  • CACanada≈1 in 1.1Kas Ross

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Roß itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

229,368 named Ross, 2010

#237 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

7 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
608 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 561 (inferred from the name graph)

Ecuador, as Lucas

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

RossLatin(measured from records)
ЛукаCyrillic(measured from records)
ΛουκαGreek(measured from records)
ლუკაGeorgian(measured from records)
ลีกาThai(measured from records)
로스Hangul(measured from records)
ראטHebrew(measured from records)

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Ross in US United States, CA Canada, NZ New Zealand, Luke in GB United Kingdom, AU Australia, NG Nigeria, Luca in IT Italy, CH Switzerland and Roth in DE Germany.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from an occupational byname for horse-handlers or drivers; also linked to HROD- names and Ross- compounds

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Roß counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Roß is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#55229,368as Ross1 in 1.4K267KRoss608
NG Nigeria—≈74,000 est.≈1 in 2.9K—Luke75
DE Germany#30≈59,000 est.≈1 in 1.4KlistedRoth235
GB United Kingdom#67≈57,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K2.8KLuke360
IT Italy#69≈55,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K5Luca305
CA Canada#34≈36,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K139Ross295
EC Ecuador—30,159as Lucas1 in 56130KLuque36
AU Australia#64≈23,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K353Luke348
CH Switzerland#2011,430as Roth1 in 73511KLuca139
NZ New Zealand#49≈5,700 est.≈1 in 86875Ross165

229,368 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; INEC — civil registry names; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Roß is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Röß

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Röß

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Rôß, Röß

8 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Roß is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, inn sign/name; plate notes the house-name Zum Roß and related rose/horse spellings.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, occupational surname used for a horse dealer or horse-related nickname

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, from a nickname comparing a person to a horse

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, Formerly standard spelling of Ross which was deprecated in the spelling reform (Rechtschreibreform) of 1996.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, Zum Hausnamen bzw. Appellativ mhd. rôs/ors 'Roß'; die Karte zeigt den Vokalwechsel Roß/Rose und die Schreibung mit ß.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000Edgar Roß, b. 1807Joseph Roß, b. 1836Daniel Roß, b. 1840Theodor Roß, b. 1864Emil Roß, b. 1884Frieda Maria Wilhelmine Ross, b. 1899Wolfgang Roß, b. 1935Reinhard Roß, b. 1950Thomas Roß, b. 1964

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Dear Roß, (English)
InformalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 6 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Roß
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202414#47,506

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Roß mean, and where does it come from?
from an occupational byname for horse-handlers or drivers; also linked to HROD- names and Ross- compounds Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
How do you pronounce Roß?
A machine transcription gives /ʁoːs/ (IPA) for German.
In which country does Roß have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 229 thousand people named Ross, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Roß most common?
No national register we hold counts the spelling Roß itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Ecuador's: the national register counts about 1 in 561 people named Lucas.
How common is the name Roß?
In the United States, the national register counted 229,368 people named Ross in 2010, about 1 in 1.4 thousand residents.
How common is Roß compared with other names?
In the United States, Roß is the 55th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Roß?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ro%C3%9F

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Roß” — the 55th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Roß parses inside a full name →