Short form of Arnold, from Germanic elements meaning 'eagle power.'
Arno is a Germanic name with two overlapping sources, both giving it a confident brevity. As a short form of names compounded with arn- — Arnold, Arnolf, Arnaud — it derives from the Old High German arn, meaning eagle. The eagle in Germanic naming tradition was not merely a bird but an emblem of vision, power, and sovereignty; to carry an eagle name was to carry an aspiration toward something sharp and aerial.
As a given name, Arno distills that compound tradition down to its essential element. The name is also inseparable from the Arno River, the great waterway of Tuscany that flows through Florence and Pisa before emptying into the Ligurian Sea. The Arno has witnessed the entirety of the Italian Renaissance — Dante crossed its bridges, Leonardo sketched its floods, the Ponte Vecchio spans it with its goldsmiths' shops intact since the fourteenth century.
When the Arno catastrophically flooded in November 1966, it threatened irreplaceable manuscripts and artworks, galvanizing an international rescue effort of volunteers known as the Mud Angels. The river's name thus carries an association with beauty, history, and artistic civilization. As a given name, Arno has been most consistently used in Germany, the Netherlands, and Flanders, with a smaller but steady presence in France as a variant of the medieval Arnaud.
It is borne by Arno Schmidt, the eccentric and demanding German novelist whose Zettel's Traum remains one of the most extravagant literary constructions of the twentieth century. In contemporary use Arno appeals to parents drawn to short, strong names with European heritage — it is recognizable without being common, and it ages exceptionally well.