Roll

surname · Latin script

Meaning: and énér. v., kikili, gigilingo; njdwele, to roll between the hands, to wash as cloth; roll up, kot6, magotd; to roll, turn from side to side, géndebele

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Roll is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 63K
  • USUnited States1 in 66K

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 Roll 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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈15,000 people, est.

Sources
319 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

and énér. v., kikili, gigilingo; njdwele, to roll between the hands, to wash as cloth; roll up, kot6, magotd; to roll, turn from side to side, géndebele

Sources 1

  • Vocabulary of the Mende Language

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Roll 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 Roll is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈15,000 est.≈1 in 90K—Roll7
US United States5,0111 in 66K5.1KRoll319
DE Germany≈3,500 est.≈1 in 23K—Roll117
GB United Kingdom≈870 est.≈1 in 76K469Roll98
PH Philippines≈720 est.≈1 in 151K—Roll26
NL Netherlands676as Rol1 in 26K676Roll12
AU Australia≈410 est.≈1 in 63K—Roll67
NO Norway3681 in 15K368—18
AT Austria≈200 est.≈1 in 44K—Roll27

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 — Surname Frequency 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)

Roll is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, Philippines

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Röll, Rōll, Róll

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Also written Röll

  • Norwegian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Norway, Denmark, Sweden

    Languages: Norwegian, Danish, Swedish

    Also written Röll

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Röll

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, United Kingdom, Pakistan

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Röll

  • Indonesian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Malaysia, Philippines

    Also written Röll

  • Swahili surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom

    Also written Röll

46 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)

Roll is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, To revolve by turning over and over; to move by turning on a horizontal axis; to impel forward with a revolving motion on a supporting surface.

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

  • In English, Different form of Rollo.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • In Breton, rouleau ; rôle ; laisse ; liste

    as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

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)

18001850190019502000Alfred Philippe Roll, b. 1845Gernot Roll, b. 1939Richard Roll, b. 1939John McCarthy Roll, b. 1947Michael Roll, b. 1961Sylvia Roll, b. 1973Shark Boy, b. 1975Idan Roll, b. 1984Michael Roll, b. 1987Matthias Roll, b. 1991

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 35 sources across 20 countries.

Official registers attesting Roll
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020005.1K#6,216
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105K#6,732
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.7K#6,937
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002469#11,936
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—368#4,028
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200772#24,375
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

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 Roll mean, and where does it come from?
and énér. v., kikili, gigilingo; njdwele, to roll between the hands, to wash as cloth; roll up, kot6, magotd; to roll, turn from side to side, géndebele Recorded by Vocabulary of the Mende Language.
What are other forms of the name Roll?
In the etymology graph, Rollo is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Roll?
A machine transcription gives /ɹəʊl/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Roll have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Roll in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled roll.
Where is Roll most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Roll is densest in Norway — about 1 in 15 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Roll?
In the United States, the national register counted 5,011 people named Roll in 2010, about 1 in 66 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Roll?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/roll

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, “Roll”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Roll parses inside a full name →