Gren
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Obsolete spelling of grin
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ɡreːn/(machine-generated) Swedish · model-generated
Gren is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- SESweden1 in 4.5K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 38K
- NONorway1 in 152K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Poland (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 166 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.5K (inferred from the name graph)
2,491 people, 2026
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Grén in FI Finland.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)ornamental surname from Swedish gren ‘branch’ (Old Norse grein). In some cases the name may have been chosen with some reference to the notion of the ‘branches’ making up a family ‘tree’, but it also falls into the category of words denoting natural features, which were drawn on heavily when Swedish surnames came to be formed wholesale in the 19th century.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Gren is read
(measured from records)Gren 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.
- English42%
Obsolete spelling of grin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Hebrew20%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Gren in Hebrew.
- Swedish8.2%
ornamental surname from Swedish gren ‘branch’ (Old Norse grein). In some cases the name may have been chosen with some reference to the notion of the ‘branches’ making up a family ‘tree’, but it also falls into the category of words denoting natural features, which were drawn on heavily when Swedish surnames came to be formed wholesale in the 19th century.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
a branch (on a tree or bush)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)Gren 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | — | 2,491 | 1 in 15K | 1.3K | Gren | 1 |
| SE Sweden | #862 | 2,246 | 1 in 4.5K | 2.2K | Gren | 50 |
| US United States | — | 437 | 1 in 761K | 486 | Gren | 166 |
| FI Finland | — | 370 | 1 in 15K | 370 | Grén | 6 |
| BR Brazil | — | 346 | 1 in 612K | 346 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | — | 153 | 1 in 38K | 153 | — | 1 |
| TC Turks & Caicos Islands | #884 | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Gren | 1 |
2,491 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026, counting the spelling greń. 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 2000; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Gren is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Danish, a branch, bough (protrusion of wood from the trunk of a tree)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In vo, grain (British English: corn)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Bokmål, a branch (of a tree etc.)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)- Friedrich Albrecht Carl Grenb. 1760DEGerman chemist
- Erik Grenb. 1904SESwedish classical scholar and librarian (1904-1959)
- Gunnar Grenb. 1920SESwedish footballer
- Elisabeth Elliotb. 1926USnot in their usual nameAmerican Christian missionary (1926-2015)
- Genowefa Grenb. 1946PLpolitician
- Roman Grenb. 1951PLscreenwriter
- Hans Grenb. 1957SESwedish footballer and manager
- Hanna Greńb. 1959PLPolish writer, economist
- Mats Grenb. 1963SESwedish footballer and manager
- Joakim Grenb. 1986SESwedish association football player
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)31 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 2.2K | #462 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 486 | #42,056 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 462 | #49,237 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 437 | #48,347 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 370 | #4,499 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 346 | #23,505 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 153 | #3,482 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 109 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 57 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 57 | #45,304 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 52 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 52 | #48,756 |
Reference works 6
- 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)
- 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
- 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
- Where does the name Gren come from?
- ornamental surname from Swedish gren ‘branch’ (Old Norse grein). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gren?
- In Swedish /ɡreːn/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Gren mean?
- In English, Obsolete spelling of grin.
- In which country does Gren have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Gren, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gren.
- Where is Gren most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gren is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 4.5 thousand people — even though Poland holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gren?
- In Poland, the national register counted 2,491 people named Gren in 2026, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
- How common is Gren compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Gren is the 862nd most common surname of 187,334 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gren?
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/grenThe 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, “Gren” — the 862nd most common surname in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.