Gravè
surname · Latin script
Gravè is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English grave, grafe, from Old English græf, grafu (“cave, grave, trench”), from Proto-West Germanic *grab, from Proto-Germanic *grabą, *grabō (“grave, trench, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-Eur.
- FRFrance≈1 in 29K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 47K
- BEBelgium1 in 273K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gravè itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 237 (measured from records)
- 1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,800 named Graeve, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Grave in US United States, DE Germany, NL Netherlands and Graeve in BE Belgium, FR France, CN China.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Middle Englishgrave(measured from records)
- Old Englishgræf“cave“cave, grave, trench”(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*grab(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*grabą“grave“grave, trench, ditch”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*gʰrebʰ-“to dig“to dig, scratch, scrape”(measured from records)
From Middle English grave, grafe, from Old English græf, grafu (“cave, grave, trench”), from Proto-West Germanic *grab, from Proto-Germanic *grabą, *grabō (“grave, trench, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrebʰ- (“to dig, scratch, scrape”). Cognate with West Frisian grêf (“grave”), Dutch graf (“grave”), Low German Graf (“a grave”), Graff, German Grab (“grave”), Danish, Swedish and Norwegian grav (“grave”), Icelandic gröf (“grave”). Related to groove.
Sources 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
- A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
- Wiktionary
Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gravè 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 | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 363K | — | Graeve | 1 |
| FR France | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 29K | 290 | Graeve | 123 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 47K | listed | Grave | 98 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,389 | 1 in 152K | 1.4K | — | 3 |
| US United States | — | 705 | 1 in 472K | 776 | Grave | 237 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 560 | 1 in 31K | 560 | Grave | 38 |
| NO Norway | — | 316 | 1 in 17K | 316 | — | 9 |
| DK Denmark | — | 125 | 1 in 47K | 125 | — | 2 |
| BE Belgium | #412 | 43 | 1 in 273K | 43 | Graeve | 76 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gravè mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English grave, grafe, from Old English græf, grafu (“cave, grave, trench”), from Proto-West Germanic *grab, from Proto-Germanic *grabą, *grabō (“grave, trench, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-Eur… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 4 other sources.
- In which country does Gravè have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.8 thousand people named Graeve in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Gravè most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gravè is densest in Norway — about 1 in 17 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gravè?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 1,389 people named Gravè, about 1 in 152 thousand residents.
- How common is Gravè compared with other names?
- In Belgium, Gravè is the 412th most common surname of 246,397 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gravè?
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/grav%C3%A8The 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, “Gravè” — the 412th most common surname in Belgium. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.