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Family name origins & meanings
- Italian (northern) : topographic name for someone who lived near an area of cultivated land, from (terra) arata ‘cultivated (land)’, or a habitational name from a place named with this word, as for example Arata in Piedmont.
- Japanese : rare name, meaning ‘wild rice paddy’ or ‘new rice paddy’, listed in the Shinsen Shōjiroku. Characters for the latter meaning tend to be pronounced Nitta or Shinden in Japan proper; the reading Arata is from the Ryūkyū Islands. All three versions are found in western Japan.