Family name origins & meanings
- French : diminutive of Rouille, apparently a nickname from Old French rouiller ‘roll the eyes in anger’. However, in medieval slang the term denoted a type of barrel or cask, and the surname may have arisen, perhaps as a nickname or a metonymic occupational name, from this sense. The surname Ross is associated with Rouillard, perhaps arising out of a confusion with rouille ‘rust’.
- A Rouillard from the Maine region of France is documented in Quebec City in 1653, with the secondary surname <xref>Lariviere</xref>.