Updated June 9, 2019
Family name origins & meanings
- Indian (Gujarat and Bombay city) : Hindu (Vania) and Parsi namefrom Gujarati səraf ‘banker’, ‘money-changer’, fromArabic ̣sarrāf. There has probably been some confusionwith Arabic sharīf ‘noble’ and sharāfa‘nobility’, which have also been borrowed into Hindi and other modernIndian languages. Shroff is used as a vocabulary word in IndianEnglish to denote a banker or money changer.
- English : although this is for the most part an Indian name (see 1 above), itwas already well established in England in the 19th century (seebelow) and may also be of English origin. If it is not Indian, theetymology is unknown.
