This surname is derived from a nickname. 'le roi,' the king; v. King and Rex.

Simon Roy, Cambridgeshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Edonia Roy, 1379: Poll Tax of Yorkshire.

Galfridus Roye, 1379: ibid.

1614. Thomas Downton and Anne Roye: Marriage Lic. (London).

A descriptive surname derived from the personal appearance of the first bearer, Gaelic ruadh, 'red' (compare 'Rob Roy'). In 1428 we have record of a remission by James I to Donald Ruffus (i.e. ruadh) (Rose, p. 126). Moritius Roy was witness in Perth in the reign of James II (Scon, p. 189), and Donaldus Roye appears in Murthlac, 1550 (Illus., II, p. 261). Hugh, twelfth Lord Fraser of Lovat was surnamed 'Husten Roy' (Red Hugh), from the color of his hair (Wardlaw, p. 155). John Roy, sheriff of Inverness in hac parte, 1563 (ER., XIX, p. 507). Complaint was made by Patrick Roy in Dysart, 1695 (Dysart, p. 55). Reid has nearly always ousted Roy as a rendering of ruadh. Hence Macinroy for earlier Macan eroy (1555), i.e. M'Ian ruadh, red John's son.

(Anglo-French-Latin) King (a nickname and pageant-name) [French roi, Old French rei, Latin rex, regis, a king] In to the ring of the Roy Robert, The first king of the gud Stewart.—Roy Robert, 1-2.

(Celtic) Red, Red-Haired [Irish and Gaelic ruadh (dh mute), red]

“King” in Old French. From house or inn sign or pageant. Also “Red” in Scots.

(French, English, Scottish) One connected in some way with the king's household; one who played the part of of a king in tournaments; the red-haired or ruddy man.

Has no relation to the French roi. It is Gaelic, and signifies the red-haired; and, as such, it has often been used as a sobriquet, down almost to our own times, in conjunction with, or to supersede, a family name.

Red haired.

(Gaelic.) Ruadh, Roe, Roy, red—haired; also Roye, a town in England. Roi, French, king, whence Le Roy.

(Scotch), Red. le Roy (French), the King.

An old and frequent surname in France, Roy was introduced early into the French colonies of America. A Pierre Roy lived in Quebec as early as 1621, and by the end of that century Canada counted more than 50 Roy families,1* whose descendants today number into the thousands in Montreal and Quebec.

A Jean Roy was among the first Frenchmen to occupy the Gulf Coast under Iberville (1699-1708);3 by the mid-eighteenth century Roys were found in French posts from Detroit through Illinois and Missouri to Lower Louisiana.

Although a large number of Roy families, some from Canada, others from France, lived in New Orleans during the eighteenth century, it is uncertain how many of the households of that name currently in the city (some 150) are their descendants.

Most of the Roy families in Louisiana stem mainly from three progenitors. Many who live in old St. Landry and Calcasieu parishes probably descend from Joseph Roy dit Chatellerault, a voyageur, native of Quebec, who first worked out of Detroit, then settled for a time in Kaskaskia, Illinois; after the death of his first wife (Madeleine Perthius), he left for Lower Louisiana, arriving ca. 1743 at Pointe Coupee, where he married Perrine LaCour (1744).

Their son, Joseph-Noël (m. 1770 Anne Bordelon) moved from Pointe Coupee to the Grande Prairie area north of Opelousas Post; there he and his six sons began a long line of Louisiana Roys.

Church and civil records suggest that sons Joseph-Noël, Jr. (m. 1794 Euphrasie Carrière) and Jean-Baptiste (m. 1806 Françoise Doucet) and their descendants remained in the Grande Prairie area until the late 1800s; sons Solastie (m. 1803 Marie Nezat) and Valery (m. 1804 Brigitte Nezat) and their progeny settled south of Opelousas and eventually along the upper Teche at Breaux Bridge and Arnaudville; son Noël (m. 1802 Céleste Waible) and his descendants appear to have gone into stock raising in the prairies west and south of Opelousas, some reaching the Eunice and Iota areas by the 1870s; son Leufroy (m.

1811 Delphine Guernard) apparently settled in the Attakapas north of St. Martinville.

Another Canadian, Joseph-Marie Roy, arrived in Pointe Coupee in the 1770s, where he married first Catherine Gueho, second (1776) Julie Bizette.

In the early 1790s he and his family, including four sons, moved northward into the Avoyelles prairies.

Of the sons more is known of Joseph, Jr. (m. ca. 1800 Marie Bordelon), whose descendants comprise most of the Roys of Avoyelles Parish, including the well-known early twentiethcentury educator, Victor-Léandre Roy of Marksville.

Although those of Avoyelles still form a compact cluster in and around the towns of Marksville, Mansura, Hessmer, and Bunkie, several Roys of that area may have moved to Alexandria by 1880.

A third progenitor of Louisiana Roys came from Acadia after the Expulsion of 1755. By 1766 Abraham Roy and his second wife, Madeleine Doucet, were living on the east bank of the Mississippi in St. James Parish.

His son (by his first wife, Anne Aubois), Sauveur, for a time carried on the Roy name in St. James after his marriage to Marie Bourgeois in 1780.

However, two of Sauveur's sons, François (m. 1813 Françoise Richard) and Charles (m. 1820 Marie Thériot), moved to the Attakapas and there began the Acadian line of Roys of St Martin and Lafayette parishes, today one of the main centers of the clan.

After the Civil War a son of Charles, Pierre-Bienvenue Roy, became one of the richest and most prominent planters and merchants of the area, with a total land holding of 3,825 acres in Lafayette, St. Martin, and Vermilion parishes.

Other members of the Acadian line migrated westward into Acadia and Calcasieu parishes, one family headed by André Roy settling on Grand Chenier in the coastal marshes east of Creole in the early 1870s

From the Old Norse, Hroi; from the Dutch, Rooij; Fr., from the German, Roy; a personal name.