Graham
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Anglo-Norman family from Lincolnshire; from Old English græg ham, 'grey home'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡɹeɪəm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Graham is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 28th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 849(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 995
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.1K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #399 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 579 (measured from records)
- 1 in 316 (inferred from the name graph)
≈860,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Dominica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Anglo-Norman family from Lincolnshire; from Old English græg ham, 'grey home'. First documented in 1128 with William de Graham.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Graham, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Graham counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈860,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Graham | 47 |
| US United States | #98 | 201,159 | 1 in 1.7K | 201K | Graham | 579 |
| GB United Kingdom | #63 | ≈61,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 3 | Graham | 358 |
| CA Canada | #66 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 5 | Graham | 282 |
| AU Australia | #75 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 69 | Graham | 268 |
| IE Ireland | #62 | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 995 | — | Graham | 133 |
| JM Jamaica | #28 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 849 | — | Graham | 33 |
| DM Dominica | — | 235 | 1 in 316 | 235 | — | 6 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
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)
Graham 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 Grantham, Lincolnshire; first attested William de Graham 1127 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Flour made by grinding wheat berries including the bran.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘person from Grantham’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, surname from a place name
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Casa gris
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Thomas Grahamb. 1805GBBritish chemist (1805–1869)
- Benjamin Grahamb. 1894USAmerican economist and investor (1894-1976)
- Martha Grahamb. 1894USAmerican dancer and choreographer (1894–1991)
- Fred Grahamb. 1908USAmerican actor (1908-1979)
- Billy Grahamb. 1918USAmerican Baptist evangelist (1918–2018)
- Lauren Grahamb. 1967USAmerican actress, producer and novelist
- Heather Grahamb. 1970USAmerican actress
- Stephen Grahamb. 1973GBEnglish actor (born 1973)
- Aubrey Drake Grahamb. 1986CACanadian and American rapper, singer, and actor (born 1986)
- Kat Grahamb. 1989USAmerican actress and singer (born 1989)
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 89 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 45K | #969 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 3K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 270 | #969 |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 1979 | 69 | #100 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 64 | — |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 1979 | 45 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 13 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 5 | #795 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 3 | #727 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2010 | 3 | #387 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- How do you pronounce Graham?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɹeɪəm/ (IPA) for English.
- Where does the name Graham come from?
- Anglo-Norman family from Lincolnshire; from Old English græg ham, 'grey home'. First documented in 1128 with William de Graham. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- What does the name Graham mean?
- Recorded meaning: Anglo-Norman family from Lincolnshire; from Old English græg ham, 'grey home'.
- In which country does Graham have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 864 thousand people named Graham in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled graham.
- Where is Graham most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Graham is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 316 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Graham?
- In the United States, the national register counted 201,159 people named Graham in 2010, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Graham compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Graham is the 28th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Graham?
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/grahamThe 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), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
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, “Graham” — the 28th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.