English roe is from Old English ra or rá, from raha, from Proto-Germanic *raikhaz, cognate to Old Norse ra, Old Saxon reho, Middle Dutch and Dutch ree, Old High German reh, German Reh.

[1][2] The word is attested on the 5th-century Caistor-by-Norwich astragalus -a roe deer talus bone, written in Elder Futhark as ᚱᚨᛇᚺᚨᚾ, transliterated as raïhan.

[10] Roe deer are thought to have evolved from a species in the Eurasian genus Procapreolus,[9][11] with some 10 species occurring from the Late Miocene to the Early Pleistocene, which moved from the east to Central Europe over the millennia, where Procapreolus cusanus occurred,[11] also classified as Capreolus cusanus.

When the last ice age ended, the species initially abruptly expanded north of the Alps to Germany during the Greenland Interstadial, 12.5–10.8 thousand years ago.

During the cooling of the Younger Dryas, 10.8–10 thousand years ago, the species appears to have disappeared again from this region.

[13] It had become a very common species by the Late Neolithic, as farming by humans spread across the continent, which modified the environment so that more open habitat was created from the woodland, which advantaged the creatures.

In recent times, since the 1960s,[10] the two species have become sympatric where their distributions meet, and there is now a broad 'hybridization zone' running from the right hand side of the Volga River up to eastern Poland.