1960s; earliest use found in The Charleston Gazette. From Swedish raggare from ragga (slang) to drive around, to (try to) pick up girls while driving around, from the older (but partly still current) slang meanings ‘to drive around in a taxi trying to find customers or in a lorry trying to find assignments’ (perhaps related to Swedish regional ragga to walk with difficulty, to dawdle, probably (with expressive gemination of the consonant) from Swedish regional raga to stagger, totter, swing, apparently ultimately from the same Germanic base as rae) + -are.