Explore the Family Name Grave

The meaning of Grave

1. English: occupational name from Middle English grayve, grayve, greve ‘steward, bailiff, manorial officer who managed the lord’s demesne farm, headman of a town or village’, a borrowing from Old Norse greifi ‘earl, count’. Compare the synonymous Grieve and Reeve. 2. English: topographic name from Middle English grave ‘pit’ (Old English græf). 3. English: in Norfolk, possibly from the rare Middle English personal name Gre(y)vy, Gre(i)ve, Old Norse Greifi, Grefe, originally a nickname meaning ‘earl, count’ (see 1 above). 4. North German (also Gräve), Dutch, Flemish, and northern French: variant of German Graf ‘count’ or its Dutch cognate De Graaf, or a topographic name from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch grave ‘ditch, moat, channel’, or a habitational name from any of several places in northern Germany and the Netherlands named with this word. Compare De Grave, Graeve, and Greve. 5. French (southern): topographic name for someone who lived on a patch of gravelly soil, from Old French grave ‘gravel’ (from Latin grava), or a habitational name from any of several places called with this word. Some characteristic forenames: Spanish Manuel, Alejandro, Domingo, Florentino, Jose, Juan, Octavio, Rafael.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.