Family name origins & meanings
- German : variant of Rube 1, 2.
- German : metonymic occupational name from a diminutive of Middle High German ruobe (Latin rapum) ‘turnip’, ‘beet’, ‘oilseed rape’, grown for use as a fodder crop or in the case of rape for the oil obtained from its seeds.
- German : nickname for a big man, from a Slavic stem (Old Sorbian gruby, Czech hrubý ‘big’).
- German : nickname from a Germanized form of Slavic vrobl ‘sparrow’. Compare Wrobel.