The utterance of Ram?

Yes — and this one is particularly interesting because Rarankar appears to have a much more complicated history than simply being a Sikh word. Your instinct to ask whether it means something like “the utterance/sound of Raran” is worth pursuing, but I would separate the historical word from the later Sant Mat cosmological interpretation.

1. First: Rarankar is not a standard Sikh-scriptural word

The evidence I can find indicates that Rarankar / Rarankaar (ਰਰੰਕਾਰ) is not a word occurring in the Guru Granth Sahib in the way that Oankar/Onkar and Satnam do. A Sikh critique specifically notes that Rarankar is absent from the Guru Granth Sahib, while the Sant Mat tradition subsequently incorporated it into the five-name system.

That is important for our historical investigation: we shouldn’t assume “Rarankar” originated with Guru Nanak or Sikhism.

But there is an even more interesting clue.

2. The word seems to be

Rarankār / Raraṅkār

, not necessarily “Raran + kar”

There is an actual Hindi/Sanskrit-derived dictionary entry for ररंकार (raraṅkār):

ररंकार = रकार की ध्वनि

—that is, essentially “the sound of the letter/syllable ra” or “the sound of r-kār.”

And a Rajasthani dictionary gives ररंकार the meaning:

राम नाम की ध्वनि, जप, माला

i.e. “the sound of the name Ram,” “chanting,” or “rosary/repetition.”

Now that is very interesting in light of your question.

It suggests that Rarankar may indeed have a phonetic/onomatopoetic history, rather than necessarily being the personal name of a deity called “Raran.”

3. So who—or what—is “Raran”?

I don’t find good evidence for a historical person or deity named Raran.

Instead, there is a strong possibility that Rar- / Raraṅ- is itself a representation of a sound, with -kār functioning in the familiar Indian grammatical/phonological sense of “the sound/form of [a letter].”

Compare:

• Oṃkār / Oṅkār → the sound/form of Oṃ

• Rārkār / Raraṅkār → potentially the sound/form of ra/raraṅ

• Satkār → honoring/respect (different construction, but illustrates the productive -kār element)

• Śabdakār → one who works with words, etc.

So your question:

“Is it the utterance of Raran?”

may be close in structure but perhaps backwards historically.

It may be more like:

Raraṅ + kār → “the sounding/utterance of Raraṅ”

rather than:

Raran (a person/deity) + kar (maker) → “Raran-maker.”

The dictionary evidence that raraṅkār can mean the sound of “r” makes the phonological interpretation especially worth investigating.

4. But then we encounter Kabir — and this gets really fascinating

There is evidence of Rarankar/Rarankaar in Kabir-related Sant literature.

One version of a Kabir poem describes:

“Word from eight-petalled lotus ‘Rarankar’ emanates.”

and places it in Sunn, the great void/intermediate spiritual region.

Another Kabir tradition gives a line:

“Pashchim Akshar Ek So, Rahaa Rarankaar Hai”

and places Rarankaar in the cosmological sequence above Soham and Omkar.

So we now have a potentially important historical sequence:

older Indian yogic/vernacular sound terminology → Kabir traditions → later Sant Mat → Sikh-era and post-Sikh Sant traditions → Radha Soami five-name system

But we need to be cautious: the manuscripts and dates of the Kabir corpus are complicated, and finding the word in something attributed to Kabir does not automatically prove that the surviving wording dates to Kabir himself.

5. And this explains why Sant Mat treats Rarankar as a “sound”

This is the part I think connects directly with your earlier investigation of Jyot Niranjan → Onkar → Rarankar → Sohang → Satnam.

In modern Sant Mat descriptions, Rarankar is not merely a name. It is described as an inner sound associated with the region of Sunn/Daswan Dwar.

For example, a Sant Mat text says:

“Sunn maahi sun raarankaar”

—“in Sunn, hear Rarankar”—followed by the flute sound of Bhanwar Gupha.

And a modern RSSB publication describing Kabir material places:

• Onkar → Trikuti

• Rarankar → Set Sunn

• Sohang → higher region

So in this tradition Rarankar isn’t simply the name of an entity. It is simultaneously conceptualized as:

a Name → a Sound → a spiritual principle → a region/lord associated with that region.

That is very characteristic of Sant Mat’s development of Indian nāda/śabda concepts.

6. There is an alternative reading:

Karankār

And this is where we have to be especially careful.

One Sant Mat source discussing the five names actually says that what is transmitted as Rarankar may be a corruption/misreading of Karankār, and interprets Karankār in the sense of Karta Purakh — the One Doer/Creator.

That would produce a completely different etymology:

Karan/Kar + kār → “the Doer/Creator”

rather than:

Raraṅ + kār → “the sound of ra/raraṅ.”

I would not yet choose between these two. The textual history needs to be established first.

7. My present historical reconstruction

I’d tentatively put the possibilities in this order:

Form

Possible sense

Historical significance

Ra / Rā

a phonetic syllable/sound

very ancient Indian sound symbolism

Raraṅ / Raraṅk

repeated/resonant “ra” sound

possible vernacular sound terminology

Raraṅkār

“sound/utterance of ra”

attested dictionary meaning

Rarankaar

sacred/internal sound

Kabir/Sant traditions

Rarankar

name/sound/lord of Sunn

later Sant Mat cosmology

Karankār

“Doer/Creator”

alternative Sant Mat interpretation

The strongest concrete clue so far is actually the dictionary evidence:

ररंकार = रकार की ध्वनि — “the sound of ra.”

That makes your intuition about utterance/sound quite promising.

And there is an even bigger question

If we continue the quantitative historical/linguistic analysis we’ve been doing with Sat Nam, Soham/Sohang, Onkar, Niranjan, etc., I think the next thing to investigate is not merely “what does Rarankar mean?”

It is:

When does “Rarankar” first appear in securely datable Indian texts, and what spelling does the oldest manuscript actually use — ररंकार, ररंकारु, रारंकार, रारंकार, रारंकारा, or something else?

That could potentially tell us whether the Sant Mat interpretation is preserving a much older Indian phonological/nāda term, or whether Rarankar was itself a later Sant-period construction that was subsequently fitted into the five-sound cosmology.

And that is a much more interesting historical question than simply asking who “Raran” was.