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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Muslim : from a personal name based on Arabic ra‛īs ‘leader’, also found in combinations such as Ra‛īs ud-Dīn ‘leader of religion’.
  • German and Swiss German : from the personal name Ragiso, a pet form of any of the Germanic compound names beginning with the element rag-, a short form of ragin ‘advice’.
  • German and Czech : Slavic spelling of German Reis.
  • German and Czech : from an altered short form of the Biblical personal name Zacharias.

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