Roche
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: person who lives in a rocky place, from Old French roche “rock”
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 31 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ɹoʊʃ/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Roche is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 2.2K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 7.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 462 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈32,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)person who lives in a rocky place, from Old French roche “rock”
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
How Roche is read
(measured from records)Roche is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English54%
person who lives in a rocky place, from Old French roche “rock”
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
de Roiste; from Roch Castle in Pembrokeshire, likely of Flemish origin; arrived in Ireland with the Normans
as a nameIrish family names
One of various types of rock or geological strata.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French28%
rock (large mass of stone)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish8.9%
inflection of rochar:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Roche 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | — | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 3.4K | — | 8 |
| US United States | — | 18,940 | 1 in 18K | 19K | Roche | 462 |
| GB United Kingdom | #838 | ≈8,400 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | 8.6K | Roche | 209 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Roche | 47 |
| AU Australia | #699 | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Roche | 177 |
| IE Ireland | #107 | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Roche | 136 |
| NZ New Zealand | #804 | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Roche | 82 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Roche is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, de Róiste (French roche, rock). A completely hibernicized Norman name originally established in Munster and Wexford, now widespread. There are sixteen places called Rochestown in Ireland, six in Co. Wexford, two each in Cos. Cork and Kilkenny. Bibl. IF MIF Map Cork
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)- Édouard Rocheb. 1820FRFrench astronomer (1820-1883)
- Maurice Roche, 4th Baron Fermoyb. 1885GBBritish politician (1885-1955)
- Ruth Gillb. 1908GBnot in their usual nameBritish lady-in-waiting and baroness
- Eugene Rocheb. 1928USAmerican actor (1928–2004)
- Frances Shand Kyddb. 1936GBnot in their usual nameMother of Diana, Princess of Wales (1936-2004)
- Tony Rocheb. 1945AUAustralian tennis player
- Adi Rocheb. 1955IEIrish politician
- Shane Richieb. 1964GBnot in their usual nameBritish actor
- Alain Rocheb. 1967FRFrench footballer (born 1967)
- Charlotte Rocheb. 1978DEBritish-German television presenter and author
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)Evidence
(measured from records)54 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 31 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Roche?
- In the etymology graph, Roca, Rocca and Rocher are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Roche?
- It depends on the language: in English /ɹoʊʃ/ (Wiktionary); in French /ʁɔʃ/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /rotʃe/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Roche mean, and where does it come from?
- person who lives in a rocky place, from Old French roche “rock” Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Roche have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 32 thousand people named Roche in France, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Roche?
- In the United States, the national register counted 18,940 people named Roche in 2010, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
- How common is Roche compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Roche is the 107th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Roche?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/rocheThe 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, “Roche” — the 107th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.