Family name origins & meanings
- English : topographic name from Middle English grene ‘green’ + dale ‘dale’, ‘valley’ or hille, hull ‘hill’; alternatively, the surname may have arisen from either of two habitational names meaning ‘green valley’: Greendale in Devon or Grindale in East Yorkshire, or from Grindal (‘green hill’) in Shropshire.
- South German : from Middle High German grindel ‘latch’, ‘beam’, ‘pole’, probably a metonymic occupational name for a doorman.
- Respelling of North German Grindel.