Family name origins & meanings
- German and Dutch : from the personal name Achatz, a vernacular form of the Biblical name Ahaz (2 Kings 16:1), which means ‘he (i.e. God) has made fast’. The Latinate form Achatius is attested as a surname in Pforzheim in 1556, and may have a different origin: Achatius was a Byzantine saint, a Roman soldier believed to have been crucified, supposedly with 10,000 companions, on Mount Ararat during the reign of Hadrian; his name is probably a derivative of Achates, the name of Aeneas’s faithful Trojan companion in Virgil’s Aeneid.