Roost
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹust/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Roost is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Switzerland than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 3M(measured from records)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 13K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 19K
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 Roost 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.
- Switzerland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 132 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
442 people, 2024
Highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Roost 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | 442 | 1 in 19K | 442 | Roost | 20 |
| NL Netherlands | 263 | 1 in 66K | 263 | Roost | 15 |
| BE Belgium | 143as Rosoux | 1 in 82K | 143 | Roost | 51 |
| US United States | 110 | 1 in 3M | 167 | Roost | 132 |
| DK Denmark | 107 | 1 in 55K | 107 | — | 1 |
| EE Estonia | ≈91 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 112 | Roost | 9 |
442 people counted by BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames), 2024. 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 2020; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)
Roost is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In enm, alternative form of roste (“roast”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, The place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gv, peel, rind
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, v., kaye
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Heinrich Roostb. 1872CH(1872-1936)
- Hans Roostb. 1913CH(1913-1999)
- Albert Roostb. 1919EEEstonian clergyman (1919-1999)
- Bill Roostb. 1924GBEnglish footballer (1924-2013)
- Virve Roostb. 1933EEEstonian biologist and gardener (1933-2019)
- Ain Roostb. 1946CAEstonian-Canadian athletics competitor and psychologist (born 1946)
- Ueli Roostb. 1948CHSwiss business executive
- Leo Bettina Roostb. 1961CH(*1961)
- Florian Roostb. 1989CHfigure skater
- Johann Baptist Roostpublisher
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)
Attested in 20 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 442 | #2,950 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 263 | #7,863 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 167 | #111,996 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 157 | #105,374 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 112 | #631 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 110 | #149,395 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 107 | #5,085 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 97 | #823 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 47 | #27,214 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- How do you pronounce Roost?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹust/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Roost have the most bearers?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted about 442 people named Roost, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled roost.
- How common is the name Roost?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 442 people named Roost in 2024, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Roost?
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/roostThe 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, “Roost”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.