From the French city name Paris, used as a surname-derived given name meaning 'from Paris.'
Parris as a given name draws from the ancient city-name Paris, itself believed to derive from the Parisii, a Gaulish tribe who settled the banks of the Seine around 250 BCE. The tribal name's own etymology is uncertain, with some scholars proposing a Celtic root meaning "working people" or "craftsmen." In Greek mythology, Paris was the Trojan prince whose fateful judgment on Mount Ida — awarding the golden apple to Aphrodite — set in motion the entire Trojan War, and whose abduction of Helen gave Homer his epic subject.
The name thus enters Western consciousness trailing both beauty and catastrophe. In American history, the name Parris carries a specifically charged resonance: Samuel Parris was the minister of Salem Village whose household — and whose daughter Betty and niece Abigail — stood at the epicenter of the 1692 witch trials, one of the most studied episodes of mass hysteria in colonial history. While that association is dark, it has also made Parris a name with genuine historical gravity and a place in American literary imagination, appearing in countless accounts, plays, and dramatizations of that event.
As a given name in the 20th and 21st centuries, Parris drifted free of those associations and has been used for both boys and girls, appealing to parents who want a name that sounds familiar without being common. The double-R spelling differentiates it from the city and the mythological prince, giving it a fresher, more personal identity. It occupies comfortable space alongside names like Ellis, Lennon, and Monroe — surnames repurposed as first names with a touch of literary or historical glamour.