Recorded in over two hundred spelling forms including Rose, Rosen, Royce, (English), Larose, Roz (French), Ross (Scottish), Rosa, Rosi, Rosone and Rosetti (Italian and Spanish), Rosanski of Poland, and many more, this is a medieval European surname. Its origins are however even more ancient, being pre-Christian Roman or Hebrew. It derives from the ancient Latin word 'rosa' meaning 'the rose', or the Hebrew 'reyzn' of the same meaning. It can be said to have four possible but ultimately overlapping sources. These are that the name is either topographical for a person who lived at a place where wild roses grew, or a metonymic for a rose grower, or it may have been residential for somebody who lived at a place with the sign of the rose, an inn perhaps, or that it may descend from the early baptismal name 'Rosa or Rose'. The name as a baptismal name only, is recorded in the famous Domesday Book of England in the year 1086, but the surname as a hereditary name is some two hundred years later. Early examples of the name recordings taken from authentic medieval charters, registers, and rolls, include: Rudolf Rosse of Basel, Switzerland, in 1283, Richard Roys, in the Subsidy Rolls of Suffolk, England, in 1327, and Hugh Rosesone, in the rolls of Staffordshire in 1342. Other examples are those of Christof Rosa of Friedberg, Germany, in 1579, and Anna Russon, who married Evan Daniell at St Dunstans in the East, Stepney, London, in 1628. Henry Rose, the Baron Strathnairn (1801 - 1885) served in Syria, India and Ireland with the British army and was appointed Field-Marshal in 1877. The first recorded spelling of the family name anywhere in the world is believed to be that of Baldungas Rose of Mainz, Germany, in 1283. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop", often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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