Family name origins & meanings
- French : from a diminutive of Old French garra ‘crock or jar for oil’, presumably a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such crocks or for a producer or seller of aromatic or comestible oils. This name is concentrated in LA.
- The Jarreau families of LA trace their descent from two men from Bordeaux, France: Pierre Jarreau and Jacques Jarreau, possibly Pierre’s nephew, who arrived in the 1760s and 1780s. Their descendants have long been concentrated in Pointe Coupee parish and Baton Rouge.