origin and meaning
Can anyone help us track back our origin. We presume our great grandfather came from Europe in the area on the border of the Netherlands, Belgium and France. We are suspecting that there is a French influence, maybe Flemish. There are very few male members in South Africa still bearing the family surname - the lineage is really threatened as each member have more females than male descendants
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Apparently at the moment this surname doesn't exist in Europe and in USA neither. It is only South African.
Unfortunately I am unable to tell you the meaning! Could it be a variant of a belgian surname like ROELVOORDE? That now in Belgium doesn't exist.
See the international white Pages.
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the letters 'b', 'v' and 'w' are often interchangeable. I've checked and there are surnames Roelbert and Roelwert, just like there are the names Albert, Alvert and Alwert. Roelvert is highly likely to be of Flemish origin. It is not in the large database of Dutch surnames of the Meertens Instituut, so it's either quite rare or not really Dutch. The latter is probably the case. The name is more used in France than in the Netherlands, probably originating from the region round Dunkerque, where many people still speak a sort of Flemish-Dutch.

The etymology of the name is probably the same as Robert, also written as Roebert, although i can't explain the 'l' in Roelvert. Maybe this is do to influence of the French language? Anyway, Robert is a contraction of the Germanic components rod- and -bert . The meaning of those components are 'fame' (meaning for rod- ) and 'glorious, gleaming' (for -bert ). The component bert is the same brecht , thus Robert is Robrecht and Albert is Albrecht.

Vert means 'green' in French, but it is highly unlikely that this is a root of the name Roelvert, because of the existence of Roelwert and Roelbert, which leads to the Germanic languages.
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