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Family name origins & meanings
- German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : habitational name from a house distinguished with a red sign (Middle High German rōt ‘red’ + schilt ‘sign’, ‘shield’), the earliest recorded example dating from the 13th century. The famous banking family of this name took it from a house so marked in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt-am-Main, but the name has also been adopted by many Ashkenazic Jews unrelated to the family. In Britain the surname is normally given the spelling pronunciation ‘Roths-child’; the original pronunciation is ‘Rote-shilt’.
- The Rothschild dynasty of bankers was founded by Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812). He abandoned his original intention to become a rabbi after his father’s early death, and became a factor to the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. His five sons established branches of the banking business, and of the family, in Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris. They were made barons of the Austrian Empire; successive generations in Britain produced the first practicing Jew to sit in Parliament and the first to be raised to the peerage.