Family name origins & meanings
- Danish, North German, and Dutch : from a reduced form of the personal name Erasmus, Latin form of Greek Erasmos, a derivative of erān ‘to love’. St. Erasmos (died 303) was a bishop of Formia in Campania, who was martyred under Diocletian. However, in northern Europe from the 16th century onwards, the name was more often selected in honor of the great Renaissance Dutch humanist scholar and teacher Erasmus Roterodamus (1469–1536).