Family name origins & meanings
- North German : unexplained. It is probably a habitational name from a lost place or a topographic name for someone who lived in a clearing (Middle Low German rot ‘cleared land’) by a stream called El(t)ze, of which there are several examples. It may also be an altered form of Elsenroth, a habitational name from a place so called near Waldbröl in the Westerwald Mountains.