Jewish; also Welsh and English: from the Biblical name borne by the Israelite leader who led the Israelites out of Egypt, as related in the Book of Exodus. The Hebrew form of the name, Moshe, is probably of Egyptian origin, from a short form of any of various ancient Egyptian personal names, such as Rameses and Tutmosis, meaning ‘conceived by (a certain god)’. However, very early in its history it acquired a folk etymology, being taken as a derivative of the Hebrew root verb mšh ‘draw (something from the water)’, and was associated with a story of the infant Moses being discovered among the bullrushes by Pharaoh's daughter (Exodus 2: 1–10). Moses is the usual English spelling. As a Welsh family name, it was adopted among Dissenter families in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a North American family name, it has absorbed forms of the name from other languages, for example Moise and Moshe.
