Record Atlas
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Roosen

Roosen. Attested in Belgium, United States of America, France, Denmark, borne by about 2,069 people in the registers this map holds.

The same name, spelt two ways

One systematic substitution — s for z, w for v, ch for h — where BOTH spellings are independently attested surnames. Kosina and Kozina are one man in two clerks' handwriting. Stronger than sounding alike, weaker than somebody having checked.

Roozen

Only sounds alike

An algorithm's guess. Useful for casting a net, and not evidence.

RosénRoesenRossenRoosjen

What Wikidata says this name is

Copied from Wikidata, not worked out here. It is crowd-sourced and wrong in places, which is why the item is linked below rather than the claim simply repeated.

  • Dutch the language of the name

    Which is not where a family is from. A Polish surname can be borne by people whose forebears never saw Poland, and often is.

  • Read about it on Wikipedia ↗ an article, with its own sources

Q18564129 on Wikidata ↗ — the item every line above came from.

It is also the name of a place

This is as close to an origin as this map will go. A surname that is also a place name often came from it — and often did not: plenty are occupations or patronymics that happen to collide with a place, and plenty of places are named after a family rather than the other way round. It is a fact with a source, which is more than an etymology page offers.

  • Rosen Germany only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Rosen United States of America only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Rössen Germany only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 4 countries: Belgium, United States of America, France, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedFrance — 138 peopleUnited States of America — 258 peopleBelgium — 1,673 people
A dot is a country, not a place. It sits at the country's centre because a national register counts a country; nothing here says where in it these people are. A hollow ring is attested but not counted — Denmark publishes which surnames exist and not how many carry each, and a family archive finds a name without counting heads. Sizing those by a number nobody published would invent it. Blank is not absence. This draws the 4 countries where the eleven registers and eight archives behind this atlas attest the name. Most of the world has no surname register this project can read, and the ones that do and will not are listed with the reason.
Belgium, by commune. 1,673 people in 93 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Sint-Truiden with 105. This is the only country here that can be drawn this way — every other register counts a country and stops, so a blank elsewhere is a gap in what states publish, not in the name.
93 places drawn, the largest being Sint-Truiden, Hasselt, Lommel, Tongeren-Borgloon, Oudsbergen, Landen, Herk-de-Stad, Bilzen-Hoeselt, Tienen, Heusden-ZolderLuik — 13Riemst — 14Hamont-Achel — 14Gingelom — 14Diepenbeek — 14Grâce-Hollogne — 14Geetbets — 14Wellen — 15Scherpenheuvel-Zichem — 15Mol — 15Namen — 17Balen — 17Maaseik — 18Linter — 19Zonhoven — 20Nieuwerkerken — 21Ronse — 21Mechelen — 22Leuven — 23Kortenaken — 25Gent — 26Diest — 28Zoutleeuw — 29Pelt — 30Antwerpen — 30Bree — 31Lummen — 32Beringen — 34Halen — 35Genk — 36Heusden-Zolder — 41Tienen — 44Bilzen-Hoeselt — 45Herk-de-Stad — 51Landen — 54Oudsbergen — 58Tongeren-Borgloon — 62Lommel — 75Hasselt — 89Sint-Truiden — 105

Country by country

Each country below can carry up to three different kinds of evidence, and none of them is the same claim. A register is a head-count — a state counted these people. A record is one document naming the surname on that ground, narrower evidence and often much older. And a volume overlapping these dates is a document from the right place and years — never a document known to name this surname. None of the three ever means the name exists in that country and nowhere else, or that it exists nowhere but here.

Belgium

1,673 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

4,883 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1890s and 1960s — the decades Roosen is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Roosen. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records. See everything this atlas holds for Belgium →

United States of America

258 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

327,396 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1870s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Roosen is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Roosen. The commonest kinds: Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for United States of America →

France

138 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

82 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1840s — the decades Roosen is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Roosen. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Denmark

Borne — a state counted them — Navne registreret i Danmark, January 2020 (Danmarks Statistik, republished by Digitaliseringsstyrelsen).

Whose archive to write to

1,201 of 4,099 volumes held for Denmark overlap the 1850s, 1910s, 1940s, 1960s and 1970s — the decades Roosen is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Roosen. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Probate, land and notarial, Cemeteries and burials. See everything this atlas holds for Denmark →

When it was being born, in France

INSEE counts births by surname and decade from the état civil, 1891 to 2000 — the only dated evidence in this dataset. A name that starts at zero and climbs arrived; a name that falls to nothing left, died out, or emigrated, and the decade it stops is the decade to stop searching. It counts births registered in France, so a family that emigrated in 1900 simply stops appearing, which is information rather than a defect.

  • 1891–1900 4
  • 1901–1910 10
  • 1911–1920 8
  • 1921–1930 12
  • 1931–1940 8
  • 1941–1950 17
  • 1951–1960 14
  • 1961–1970 12
  • 1971–1980 15
  • 1981–1990 23
  • 1991–2000 15

Whose archive held that ground, and when

Every surname site can tell you a name is common somewhere. This one also knows which filing system held that ground in which years — and those are the two halves of one question: my people were called this, they were there, so who has the paper, and for which century. A name in Croatia before 1881 may sit in a military series and not a county one; a name in the Netherlands before 1811 has no civil record at all, only a baptism.

This is about the ground, not about your family. A register counting a name in a country says nothing about which village. And these are the pieces of a country this atlas has drawn, which in a large one may be a corner of it — Acadia reaches into Maine and is not a statement about the United States, and Bohemia's ground crosses into Poland. Each region's own page says which ground it covers. Where a country is missing below, nothing covers it yet.

Belgium
United States of America
France
Denmark
  • Denmark 4 eras Denmark–Norway → Denmark, after the loss of Norway → Prussia, then the German Empire → Denmark

Find Roosen on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable