A female name. a late-19th-C application of the plant-name (rosmarinus = ‘sea dew’) as a christian name. It was not known to Charlotte Mary Yonge, History of ChristianNames, 2 vols. 1863. Revised ed. 1884, but is now common.

The writer hopes that he may, without being condemned as either pretentious or ‘sloppy’, be allowed to repeat the text of the Christmas card he issued in 1933:—‘In no way related to Rosalia, austere and penitential Sicilian, nor to Rosalie, the patron saint of the “Poilus”, nor to Rosy Lee, the goddess of Cockneys and other Englishmen, Rosemary yet has—though her parents, “herbae gemmantes rore recenti,” may occasionally doubt it—a saintly association (“odi profanos...”) with the Virgin Mary and a poetic with “Le Roman de la Rose”, for it was owing to their pure and floral influence that rosmarine (Latin ros marinus, dew of the sea, by way of Old French rosmarin, now romarin) became rosemary, the fragrant evergreen, no less restorative and emblematic than our dainty Rosemary, who already promises to fulfil the unwilling prophecy of the sage and merry Skelton: “the soverayne rosemary.” (Perhaps it should be added that Rosalie is French soldiers’ slang for a bayonet; Rosy Lee is rhyming slang for tea.)

Found as a female name. Formed from the Latin rosmarinus.

A Latin-Hebrew name, meaning: Dew of the sea: Mary’s rose.