Family name origins & meanings
- English and French : habitational name from the city of Arras in Artois, northern France, or one of the other places in France so named.
- Scottish : habitational name from Airhouse, a locality in Channelkirk, Berwickshire.
- English : habitational name from a place called Arras in East Yorkshire, earlier spelled Erghes, from the plural of Old Norse erg ‘hut’, ‘shelter’.
- German : metonymic occupational name for a cloth merchant, from a type of woolen cloth for which the city of Arras in Flanders was famous in the Middle Ages. This name is also established in Mexico.