Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from places so named in Merseyside (formerly in Cheshire) and County Durham or from Roby in Merseyside (formerly in Lancashire). The first is named from Old Scandinavian rá ‘pole’ + býr ‘farmstead’, ‘settlement’.
- French : variant of Rabin.
- German : habitational name from Raby in Bohemia or perhaps from Rabingen in Lower Saxony.
- Probably from the Saintonge region of France, a Raby or Rabis was documented in Quebec City in 1689, with the secondary surname Saintonge.