Roscoe is an English surname from a place in Lancashire whose name comes from Old Norse and means "roe deer wood", from ra, roebuck, and skogr, wood. It was a fairly common American first name around 1900, borne by the silent-film comedian Roscoe Arbuckle and the New York senator Roscoe Conkling. Today it is rare: Roscoe ranked number 2793 in 2000, reached number 1851 in 2018 and stood at number 2248 in 2025.