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Updated June 9, 2019

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.

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