Graf
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: From Middle High German grave/grabe; may denote a title-holder, servant, or an affected person, and can also be an invented Jewish name
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡɹæf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Graf is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- ATAustria≈1 in 83K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 17Kas Gaurav
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 22Kas Gaurav
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 Graf 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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 393 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 83K (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 named Gaurav, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Gaurav in IN India, AU Australia, MY Malaysia and 3 more and Gourab in BD Bangladesh.
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)
From Middle High German grave/grabe; may denote a title-holder, servant, or an affected person, and can also be an invented Jewish name.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Graf is read(measured from records)
Graf is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English49%
From Middle High German grave/grabe; may denote a title-holder, servant, or an affected person, and can also be an invented Jewish name.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German34%
From MHG graf ‘count’; surname shows vowel variants a/e/ä/o/u/ö/i in forms like Greve, Graff, Gräf, Greif. Bearer count not given.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Plate on vowel variation in Graf/Gräf/Greve.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
ornamental name selected, like Herzog and other words denoting titles, because of their aristocratic connotations.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
count, earl
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
- Spanish5.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Graf in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Graf 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Gaurav | 40 |
| NP Nepal | — | ≈8,900 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Gaurav | 54 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Gourab | 30 |
| US United States | — | 4,525as Gaurav | 1 in 74K | 14K | Graf | 393 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 1 | Gaurav | 141 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Gaurav | 25 |
| SG Singapore | #746 | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Gaurav | 73 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 83K | 3 | Graf | 124 |
| IN India | #129 | — | — | 3.8K | Gaurav | 310 |
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: The Indian name database provides a list of popular Indian surnames and first names categorized by gender and frequency,; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)
Graf is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
It was a title name (bestowing honour). It exists in the Bretten area, Heidelsheim, Palatinate, Middle Rhine district, and since 1827 in Murg and Pfinzkreis; also in Lörrach, Baden.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
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)
- Ulrich Grafb. 1878DEGerman general (1878-1950)
- Oskar Maria Grafb. 1894DEGerman writer and activist (1894-1967)
- Herbert Grafb. 1903ATAustrian-American opera producer (1903–1973)
- Hermann Grafb. 1912DEGerman officer and fighter pilot during World War II (1912–1988)
- Willi Grafb. 1918DEGerman military physician and resistance fighter, "White Rose" member (1918–1943)
- Robert Grafb. 1923DEGerman actor (1923–1966)
- David Grafb. 1950USAmerican actor (1950–2001)
- Dominik Grafb. 1952DEGerman film and television director, screenwriter
- Steffi Grafb. 1969DEGerman tennis player
- Stephanie Grafb. 1973ATAustrian middle distance runner
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 43 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,445 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,710 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 13K | #2,719 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 5 | #23,447 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- 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 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Graf mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle High German grave/grabe; may denote a title-holder, servant, or an affected person, and can also be an invented Jewish name. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Graf?
- In the etymology graph, Grav is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Graf?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɹæf/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Graf have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Gaurav in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Graf?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,525 people named Gaurav in 2020, about 1 in 74 thousand residents.
- How common is Graf compared with other names?
- In India, Graf is the 129th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Graf?
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/grafThe 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, “Graf” — the 129th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.