Family name origins & meanings
- English (now chiefly East Anglia) : probably a topographic name for someone who lived by a patch of rough ground, from a hypothetical Old English word rū(we)t or rūhet, derivatives of rūh ‘rough’, ‘overgrown’. Compare Rauch. There are places called Ruffet(t) in Surrey and Sussex which are thought to have this origin.
- German : Swabian variant of Roth 1.
- Probably an Americanized spelling of German Rauth.
- Indian (northern states) : Hindu (Rajput, Jat, Maratha) and Sikh name meaning ‘prince’, from Sanskrit rājaputra (from rāja ‘king’ + putra ‘son’). In India this is a variant of a name more commonly spelled Ravat or Raut. The Jats have a clan called Ravat.