Family name origins & meanings
- French : occupational name for a gunmaker, a seller of guns, or the keeper of an arsenal. The French word arsenal (Italian arsenale) is from Arabic dār ạs-̣sinā‛a ‘house of fabrication’, ‘workshop’. This spelling of the surname, which is much more common in North America than in France, has been assimilated to that of other French surnames ending in -ault, for example Thibault.
- An Arsenault, also written Arsonneau, of unknown origin, was documented in Cap-de-la-Madeleine in 1665. A Pierre Arsenault went to Acadia from France in 1671.