Family name origins & meanings
- English : occupational name from Middle English greyve ‘steward’, from Old Norse greifi or Low German grēve (see Graf).
- English : topographic name, a variant of Grove.
- French : topographic name for someone who lived on a patch of gravelly soil, from Old French grave ‘gravel’ (of Celtic origin).
- North German : either from the northern form of Graf, but more commonly a topographic name from Middle Low German grave ‘ditch’, ‘moat’, ‘channel’, or a habitational name from any of several places in northern Germany named with this word.