When England was united under the strongly centralized authority of the first Norman kings a great census was taken of all the landed gentry. This census was the basic for tax records. During the reign of King Edward I (1272-1307) the name ARNOLD began to appear in these tax records as a formal surname. Later the form and spelling became stabilized. Variants spellings ARNHOLT and ARNHOLD.

ARNOLD was not a prominent name in the first census of the new United States in 1790, nor were its variant spellings of ARNHOLT and ARNHOLD. In 1964 a study of the SS Administration's files revealed that then the name was the 153rd most common in the country.