Rothschild

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Rothschild is a German name that means “at the red shield.” In old times houses used signs to show where people lived, not numbers, and a red shield was the sign. In Yiddish, Rothschild can mean “red coat.” The famous Rothschild banking family started with Mayer Amschel Rothschild and built a very large fortune.

In Denmark on 29 March 1814, all Danish Jews were required to take surnames based on where they lived. A family living in Roskilde adopted the name Rothschild, probably because of the German way of saying the town. Lea Rothschild (born 1797) was the mother of writer Meïr Aron Goldschmidt and came from that family. There is no evidence that the Roskilde Rothschilds were related to the well-known banking family. Many other people with the surname Rothschild are Ashkenazi Jews who are not related to them.