[15] Arabis was officially discovered on 2 September 1927, by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory in southwest Germany.

[15] On the same night, it was independently discovered by Soviet-Russian astronomers Sergey Belyavsky and Nikolaj Ivanov at the Simeiz Observatory on the Crimean peninsula.

[15] The asteroid was first identified as A917 UE at the Simeiz Observatory in October 1917, almost 10 years prior to its official discovery observation at Heidelberg.

[1][4] During the early 1990s, a rotational lightcurve was obtained in a photometric survey of small asteroids by European astronomers at the Chilean La Silla Observatory using the ESO 1-metre telescope.

[4] This minor planet was named after the flowering plant Arabis (rockcress), a genus of herbs of the brassicaceae (known as the mustards, the crucifers, or the cabbage family).