Rosenthal
A German habitational surname meaning “rose valley.”
The #2,194 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 18,618 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Rosenthal is a German name built from rose and tal, the German word for “valley” (from Old High German tal). Taken literally, it means “rose valley,” and it belongs to the large class of German surnames formed from place-names or picturesque landscape names. The name may originally have referred to someone from a place called Rosenthal or to a dwelling near a valley associated with roses.
History
The surname is well established in German-speaking areas and also appears widely among Ashkenazi Jewish families, where ornamental and habitational names were commonly adopted in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is also found as a place-name in several German-speaking regions, which likely reinforced its use as a surname. English-language surname dictionaries from the 19th and early 20th centuries generally treat it as straightforwardly German.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same rose + valley pattern appears in many German surnames and place-names, making Rosenthal part of a very common naming style rather than a unique one-off creation.
From the historical record
“Ger. O.H.Ger. kram, garland, wreath] ROSENTHAL (Ger.) Rose- Valley [see under Rosenbaum, and + Ger. thai, O.H.Ger. tal, valley, dale] ROTH (Ger.) Red, Ruddy [Ger. roth, O.H.Ger. rdl] ROTHSCHILD (Ger.) Red Shield (sign-name)”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)