Roque
A surname usually meaning “dweller by a rock” or “from a rocky place,” especially in French and related Romance traditions.
The #2,388 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 20,308 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Roque comes through Old French roque/roke, meaning “rock,” ultimately from Latin roca/rocca, “rock” or “stone outcrop.” In surname use, it typically named someone who lived near a notable rock, rocky hill, or place called Roque/Roque- in French-speaking areas. The underlying Latin root is associated with rough, rocky terrain.
History
The name is well attested in medieval French and Norman contexts, often with the particle de la, as in people identified by a place-name or landscape feature. Related forms spread through French, Norman, and later Iberian and other Romance-language traditions, so the surname can appear in several regional spellings. In English-language reference works, it is often grouped with surnames meaning “at the rock” or “from the rocky place.”
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
19th-century surname dictionaries note that Roque- is very common in French place-names, which is one reason the surname shows up in many local and family forms.
From the historical record
“ROAKE (A.-Fr.) Dweller at a Rock [O.Fr. roke, roque ; L.Lat. rocca ; app. f. a deriv. (rupic-us) of Lat. rupes, a rock] Geof. de la Roke. — Hund. Rolls. Roque- is common in French place- names.”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)