Raby Family History
Raby Name Meaning
English: habitational name from Raby (Cheshire) recorded as Raby from 1096–1101 Raby in Holme East Waver (Cumberland) recorded as Rabi c. 1150 or Raby in Staindrop (Durham) recorded as Raby c. 1050. The placenames probably derive from Old Norse rá ‘boundary pole’ + bȳ ‘farmstead village settlement’ though the Durham placename may derive from Old Norse rá ‘roe roe buck’ + bȳ as it does not lie on a known boundary. English: in some cases a variant of Robey . Additionally in southwestern England and the Channel Islands there appears to be a further source for the name maybe a diminutive of Robert . Altered form of French Desrabines (via the intermediate form Daraby): habitational name with fused preposition and definite article des ‘from the’ denoting someone from Les Rabines the name of a few places in Brittany. The surname Desrabines is not found in France. Compare Roby French: regional variant of Rabin . German: habitational name from Raby in Bohemia or perhaps from Rabingen in Lower Saxony. Hungarian: probably from a pet form of the rare old personal name Rabán from Latin Rabanus.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, 2022