Roosevelt

Boy name variations

Family name origins & meanings

• Dutch : topographic name for someone living by an area of uncultivated land overgrown with roses, from Dutch roose + velt ‘open country’.
• The two U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) and the latter’s wife Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) were all descended from a common ancestor, Claes Martenzen van Rosenvelt or Roosevelt, who had settled in New Amsterdam (now NY) from the Netherlands in 1649. He was the son of Maertin Cornelissen Geldersman, who had bought the farm of Rosevelt in Tholen, Zeeland, from Pieter Jorissen op het Rosevelt and his son Joris Pietersen. The family became prosperous with the growth of Manhattan. Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City; his mother was of Irish and Huguenot descent. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was his 5th cousin. His mother’s family, the Delanos, were descended from Philippe de la Noye (1602–81), a young man who arrived at Plymouth Colony in 1621 in the ‘Fortune’, one year after the Pilgrims.