Rhine
Usually a locational surname for someone from the Rhine region or along the Rhine River.
The #8,690 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 81,700 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Rhine is most often explained as a name taken from the Rhine River and the lands along it. In surname use, it would have been applied to someone who came from the Rhine area, or from a place identified with the river. The river name itself is ancient and very old in European place-name history, and later English and German surname tradition used it as a geographic label.
History
Older surname dictionaries often treat Rhine as a naturalized geographic surname, especially for people from the Rhine borderlands or the Rhineland. The name fits the broader pattern of surnames formed from well-known European rivers and regions. In English records it appears less commonly than many other locational surnames, but it is stable and straightforward in meaning.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Nineteenth-century surname writers regularly grouped Rhine with other river-based names like Rhone and Rhine-adjacent regional surnames such as Rhinelander.
From the historical record
“root ri, to flow, and is basically conn, with, e.g., Wei. rhe, a swift motion, Gr. rhSB (Ma), to flow, run, gush ; and 'Rhine' and 'Rhone '] ^ RIBCHESTER. Bel. to Ribchester (N.Lancs), ' I2th cent. Ribbecestre, Domesday Ribel- castre = the (Roman) Camp on the Ribble”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)