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Rohita (and lohita; in old vedic dialect, some amount of alternation between the two was noted even by grammarians in ancient India) is a very old word, and appears in the Rigveda. There is a cluster of words in the old language with a core of ru(d)h which all have something to do with being red, and so one can treat that as a root.

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The word rohita meant something red, in particular a chestnut horse, chestnut horses that were thought to pull the sun across the sky. It also meant a kind of deer, a kind of fish, a kind of tree, a kind of precious stone ornament, a kind of rainbow, a kind of river, a kind of metre, a class of gods, a tribe of mythological characters, a name of a country, names of lots of mythological characters, in addition to meaning blood or saffron. It also served as a generic word for red in combinations like rohitagiri, `red mountain', which was the name of a mountain.

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Of the mythological characters, most people will remember the son of the honest and famous Harishchandra, though it was also the name of one of the manus, and a son of Krishna.

It means "red color" in Hindi.