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Last name origins & meanings:

  1. 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 ‘pole’ + býr ‘farmstead’, ‘settlement’.
  2. French: variant of Rabin.
  3. German: habitational name from Raby in Bohemia or perhaps from Rabingen in Lower Saxony.
  4. Probably from the Saintonge region of France, a Raby or Rabis was documented in Quebec City in 1689, with the secondary surname Saintonge.