Ros
surname · Spanish · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Ros is a surname, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Spanish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) ‘person from Ross or Roos’ in England or Scotland, probably ‘upland, moorland’; (ii) ‘person from Rots’, Normandy, perhaps ‘woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘breeder or keeper of horses’, or from a medie.
- ESSpain1 in 2.4K◐
- ARArgentina1 in 33K
- ITItaly1 in 34K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈31K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 167 ●
- 1 in 2.4K ◐
across 14 countries
recorded for this name
79K records
Official registry-verified
Spain
Meaning & origin●
(i) ‘person from Ross or Roos’ in England or Scotland, probably ‘upland, moorland’; (ii) ‘person from Rots’, Normandy, perhaps ‘woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘breeder or keeper of horses’, or from a medieval German nickname comparing someone to a horse; (iv) from the medieval male personal name Roce, Norman form of Germanic Rozzo; (v) a different form of Rose.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | #255 | 21,196 | 41K rec. | 1 in 2.4K | 21K | Ros | 157 |
| BR Brazil | — | 5,001 | 1.4K rec. | — | 83 | Ros | 86 |
| MX Mexico | — | 3,742 | 4.7K rec. | — | — | Ros | 81 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 3,499△ | 448 rec. | 1 in 4.9K | 3.5K | Ros | 34 |
| PH Philippines | — | 3,122 | 2.6K rec. | — | — | Ros | 29 |
| US United States | — | 2,213 | 6.4K rec. | 1 in 150K | 2.4K | Ros | 167 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,398 | 9.5K rec. | 1 in 33K | 1.4K | Ros | 61 |
| IT Italy | — | 1,220 | 1.5K rec. | — | listed | Ros | 70 |
| CL Chile | — | 1,074 | 150 rec. | — | 1 | Ros | 35 |
| MY Malaysia | — | 726 | 3.1K rec. | — | — | Ros | 22 |
| SE Sweden | — | 651△ | 75 rec. | 1 in 16K | 651 | — | 17 |
| PL Poland | — | 487 | — | 1 in 79K | 487 | — | — |
Roughly 21K people in Spain bear this name (about 1 in 2.4K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Spanish112K52%
- English22K10%
- Catalan21K10%
- French19K9%
- Portuguese8.6K4%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | 112,492 | 52% |
| English | 22,118 | 10% |
| Catalan | 21,216 | 10% |
| French | 19,341 | 9% |
| Portuguese | 8,604 | 4% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Ros 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 Spanish, a type of military hat, similar to a shako
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Catalan, blond
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, redução dialetal setentrional de Rosso
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In English, pers. name, short for Rosalind,
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, Kurzform zu Rose; Belegzählung 129. Die Karte zeigt o/oo-Varianten in Rose/Los-ähnlichen Surnamen.
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 28 |
| 2000 | 28 |
| 2001 | 29 |
| 2002 | 30 |
| 2003 | 32 |
| 2004 | 32 |
| 2005 | 32 |
| 2006 | 33 |
| 2007 | 35 |
| 2008 | 37 |
| 2009 | 38 |
| 2010 | 38 |
| 2011 | 40 |
| 2012 | 39 |
| 2013 | 37 |
| 2014 | 39 |
| 2015 | 44 |
| 2016 | 44 |
| 2017 | 45 |
| 2018 | 47 |
| 2019 | 47 |
| 2020 | 52 |
SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Hyacinthe Rigaudb. 1659FRnot in their usual nameCatalan-French baroque painter (1659–1743)
- Edmundo Rosb. 1910TTTrinidadian-born British musician, vocalist, arranger and bandleader
- Antoni Ros-Marbàb. 1937ESCatalan conductor and composer
- Bepi Rosb. 1942ITItalian boxer (1942–2022)
- Rachelb. 1942FRnot in their usual nameFrench singer
- Ileana Ros-Lehtinenb. 1952CUAmerican politician (born 1952)
- Kikki Danielssonb. 1952SEnot in their usual nameSwedish singer, accordinist and song lyricist
- Mireia Rosb. 1956ESactress, producer and Catalan film director
- Ramón Rosb. 1981ESSpanish footballer
- Andrea Rosb. 1993ESSpanish actress
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 59 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 21K | #255 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 21K | #255 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 3.5K | #294 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,239 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.2K | #13,682 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,250 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.4K | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 651 | #1,490 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 402 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 349 | #21,875 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 297 | #125 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 281 | #5,930 |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 262 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Ros?
- We estimate roughly 31 thousand people bear Ros (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
- In which country does Ros have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 21 thousand people bear Ros in Spain, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled ros.
- Where is Ros most common?
- Ros is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.4 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is Ros compared with other names?
- In Spain, Ros is the 255th most common surname of 492,691 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Ros mean?
- Recorded meaning: (i) ‘person from Ross or Roos’ in England or Scotland, probably ‘upland, moorland’; (ii) ‘person from Rots’, Normandy, perhaps ‘woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘breeder or keeper of horses’, or from a medie…
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/rosThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Ros” — the 255th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.