Rousseau
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from a French medieval nickname for a red-haired person (literally ‘little red one’, from Old French rous ‘red’)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Rousseau is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country. In France it is the 36th most common surname.
- FRFrance≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium1 in 2.9K
- ITItaly≈1 in 605as Russo
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 Rousseau 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.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 483 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈100,000 named Russo, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Russo in US United States, IT Italy.
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)
from a French medieval nickname for a red-haired person (literally ‘little red one’, from Old French rous ‘red’).
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Rousseau is read(measured from records)
Rousseau is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- French67%
soit de (Le) Rousseau, nom de plusieurs localités en France, soit dérivé de roux, surnom fondé sur la couleur des cheveux
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English26%
from a French medieval nickname for a red-haired person (literally ‘little red one’, from Old French rous ‘red’).
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Jean Jacques, French philosopher
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
Rousseau 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | #172 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 605 | 1 | Russo | 148 |
| US United States | #545 | 48,696as Russo | 1 in 6.8K | 49K | Russo | 483 |
| FR France | #36 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 5.9K | Rousseau | 351 |
| AR Argentina | — | 16,597as Russo | 1 in 2.7K | 17K | — | 5 |
| BR Brazil | — | 12,573as Russo | 1 in 17K | 13K | — | 6 |
| BE Belgium | #108 | 4,015 | 1 in 2.9K | 4K | Rousseau | 106 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 2,826as Risso | 1 in 1.2K | 2.8K | — | — |
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; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Rousseau 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 nrm, redheaded
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Jean-Baptiste Rousseaub. 1670FRFrench poet
- Jean-Jacques Rousseaub. 1712FRGenevan philosopher, writer, and composer (1712-1778)
- Théodore Rousseaub. 1812FRFrench painter (1812–1867)
- Henri Rousseaub. 1844FRFrench painter (1844–1910)
- Pierre Waldeck-Rousseaub. 1846FRPrime Minister of France (1846-1904)
- Serge Rousseaub. 1930FRFrench actor (1930–2007)
- Michel Rousseaub. 1936FRFrench racing cyclist (1936–2016)
- François-Olivier Rousseaub. 1947FRFrench journalist, novelist and screenwriter
- Stéphane Rousseaub. 1966CACanadian actor and comedian
- Constance Rousseaub. 1989FRFrench actress (born 1989)
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(measured from records)
Attested in 35 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.3K | #4,297 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 8.2K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8K | #4,283 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 8K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.9K | #4,185 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 7.2K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 7.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 6.6K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 6.2K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 5.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 5.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 5K | — |
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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Rousseau mean, and where does it come from?
- from a French medieval nickname for a red-haired person (literally ‘little red one’, from Old French rous ‘red’). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Rousseau have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 103 thousand people named Russo in Italy, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Rousseau?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 4,015 people named Rousseau in 2008, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Rousseau compared with other names?
- In Italy, Rousseau is the 172nd most common surname of 502,013 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rousseau?
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/rousseauThe 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, “Rousseau” — the 172nd most common surname in Italy. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.