Genesis 46:16 names him as a son of Gad (cf Numbers 26:16).
Arod is usually taken to mean "a wild ass". It may, however, be a corruption of, or a dialect variation of, Arvad (ארוד), as in the city of that name, which means "a place of fugitives", which is to say a refuge-city.
Arvad (different link) was a Phoenician island off the Assyrian coast near Tartus, mentioned by both Pliny the Elder (Nat. 5 496) and Strabo (Geographica 16:2 et al) - the later names it Arados, the only inhabited island in Assyria, with a population of around four thousand. At different periods of history it has been known as Arvad, Arpad, Arphad, Arado, Arados, Antiochia in Pieria, and Ruad Island, but today it is Arwad.
The naming of it as Arpad and Arphad makes it sound of interest in connection with Arphachshad, but in fact there is no connection at all, besides coincidence.
Nor is the name connected to Arad in southern Israel. That city was founded only in the 1920s, some five miles from the archaeological dig at Tel Arad, and named for it. Tel Arad is known to have existed for more than a thousand years before the earliest arrival of the Beney Yisra-El, even including Av-Raham. Judges 1:16-20 describes it as a Kena'ani (Canaanite) stronghold whose king prevented the Beney Yisra-El from crossing the Negev, compelling them instead to make a circuitous journey through the Judean Mountains.
Tel Arad is best known among archaeologists for the discovery of the only biblical ostracon. Ostraca are shards of pottery, usually broken from a clay vase or pot, and used as a scratch-pad, or more often as the earliest form of election ballot.
Is Arad a corruption or variation of Ard (ארד), who appears as a grandson of Bin-Yamin in Genesis 46:21 and Numbers 26:40?
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