Ruggles
A surname most likely taken from the Norman place-name Rugles, in Eure, France.
The #6,494 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 59,056 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname is generally explained as coming from Rugles, a place in the Eure department of Normandy. In that reading, it began as a locational byname for someone who came from or was associated with that village. Some older writers also suggested links with Rugeley or with an Anglo-Norman personal name, but the Norman place-name explanation is the one most directly stated in the sources here.
History
Historical surname dictionaries consistently connect Ruggles with Norman French place-name origins, especially Rugles in Eure. The final -s appears to be a later English addition in some forms. The name is found in English records in variants such as Roggyle and Ruggle, and later became established in the modern surname form Ruggles.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
One early 20th-century surname guide says Ruggles and the English surname Rule are both ultimately from French place-names, though from different localities.
From the historical record
“ancientlj' the seat of the family. RUGGLES. 1. This coarsely plebeian name may be from a "noble Norman source," Rngles being the designation of a village in the department of Eure. 2. An- ciently Roggyle and Riiggle. It has been conjectured that the family sprang from the De Rugeleys^ of Staffordshire ; but this is…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom