Family name origins & meanings
- Indian (Gujarat and Bombay city) : Hindu (Vania) and Parsi name from Gujarati səraf ‘banker’, ‘money-changer’, from Arabic ̣sarrāf. There has probably been some confusion with Arabic sharīf ‘noble’ and sharāfa ‘nobility’, which have also been borrowed into Hindi and other modern Indian languages. Shroff is used as a vocabulary word in Indian English to denote a banker or money changer.
- English : although this is for the most part an Indian name (see 1 above), it was already well established in England in the 19th century (see below) and may also be of English origin. If it is not Indian, the etymology is unknown.