Family name origins & meanings
- Dutch, German, and Scandinavian : from Middle Low German rōsenkranz ‘wreath’, ‘rosary’ (or a cognate in a related language), hence a metonymic occupational name for a wreath or rosary maker, or a habitational name for someone who lived at a house distinguished by the sign of a wreath or in a place named with this word.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic) : ornamental adoption of the Dutch and German name, or of the German word Rosenkranz ‘wreath’.
- The Rosenkranz family were powerful and influential throughout northern Europe in the medieval and Renaissance period. They originated in Denmark, but spread throughout the Baltic area and into the Netherlands, where they became well established. Harmon Hendrick Rosenkrans, a merchant of Dutch origin, came to New Amsterdam from Bergen in Norway before 1657, the year in which he was married. Bergen was a Hanseatic port in which there were many Dutch and German traders.