Grafton
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Grafton is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: ‘person from Grafton’, from place-names meaning ‘farmstead by a grove’.
- USUnited States
- NZNew Zealand
- AUAustralia
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘person from Grafton’, from place-names meaning ‘farmstead by a grove’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Grafton is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from one of several places called Grafton; first attested William de Graftona 1130 P(Lei)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from any of several places named with the Old English elements graf ‘grove’ + tun ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’. In the United States it seems to have been adopted as a given name in honour of the third Duke of Grafton, Augustus Henry Fitzroy, who served as
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, habitational name from any of the numerous places so named from Old English gra/‘grove’ + tun ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Any of various towns across the English-speaking world:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, 259 Grange Grealey
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Richard Graftonb. 151116th-century English printer and chronicler
- Charles Chapman Graftonb. 1830USBishop of Fond du Lac (1830–1912)
- Grafton Tyler Brownb. 1841USAmerican artist and cartographer (1841-1918)
- Grafton D. Cushingb. 1864USAmerican politician (1864–1939)
- Grafton Elliot Smithb. 1871AUAustralian anatomist (1871–1937)
- Grafton Greenb. 1872USAmerican judge in Tennessee
- Cornelius Warren Graftonb. 1909USAmerican writer and lawyer
- Joseph G. Gallb. 1928USnot in their usual nameAmerican biologist (1928–2024)
- Sue Graftonb. 1940USAmerican writer from Kentucky (1940-2017)
- Anthony Graftonb. 1950USAmerican historian of early modern Europe
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 22 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 619 | #17,668 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 52 | #95 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1916 | 25 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1942 | 24 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2012 | 22 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1917 | 22 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 21 | #573 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1915 | 21 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2009 | 19 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1940 | 18 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1928 | 18 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1921 | 17 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Grafton mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person from Grafton’, from place-names meaning ‘farmstead by a grove’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Grafton have the most bearers?
- Grafton is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Grafton?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/graftonThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), and bulk access is licensed separately.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Grafton”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.