Where the Rice name comes from

The surname Rice has several unrelated origins, and it is most frequently Welsh. In Wales it began as a patronymic, an Anglicized form of the given name Rhys, just as Reese and Reece did.

As an English surname, Rice can come from Old English hris, meaning brushwood or shrubbery. Another English line started as a nickname, carried through Middle English and Anglo-Norman from the French ris, meaning smile or laughter. It could also be occupational, taken from the noun rice. In the United States, the German name Reiss was transliterated as Rice. The German Reis, meaning shoot or twig, was Americanized the same way, and that word is related to the Old English hris.