Craven
surname · Latin script
Meaning: either person from Craven, West Yorkshire, or from Irish Gaelic Ó Crabhdin
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kɹeɪvən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Craven is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- AUAustralia
- USUnited States
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)
either person from Craven, West Yorkshire, or from Irish Gaelic Ó Crabhdin
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
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)
Craven 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 the district of Craven, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested John de Crauene 1166 Cur (Y)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Yorks, so called, which is probably from a Brit, word, the ancestor of W craf garlic. There is probably no con¬ nection with ME cravant cowardly, feeble, which is of un¬ certain origin. Vars.: Cradduck, Cradock, Cradick. Craft see Croft Craig Scots; topographic name for someone who lived near a steep or precipitous rock, from Gael, creag, a word that has been borrowed in ME crag(g).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Unwilling to fight; lacking even the rudiments of courage; extremely cowardly.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, to ask or petition (for something)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In jam, gluttonous, greedy
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)
- Elizabeth Cravenb. 1750GBBritish noble
- William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven, 7th Baron Cravenb. 1770GBBritish Army general (1770-1825)
- Frank Cravenb. 1881USAmerican film actor, writer, director (1881-1945)
- Wes Cravenb. 1939USAmerican filmmaker (1939–2015)
- John Cravenb. 1940GBEnglish journalist and television presenter
- Philip Cravenb. 1950GBPresident of the IPC
- Gemma Cravenb. 1950IEIrish actress and singer
- Matt Cravenb. 1956CACanadian actor
- Beverley Cravenb. 1963GBBritish singer-songwriter
- Jonathan Cravenb. 1965USAmerican actor
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 29 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,341 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,201 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,399 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 85 | #31,076 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 85 | #30,801 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 30 | #34,957 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 26 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 15 | #45,119 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 12 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 12 | #119,413 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 12 | #35,594 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 9 | #41,021 |
Reference works 5
- 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)
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 Craven mean, and where does it come from?
- either person from Craven, West Yorkshire, or from Irish Gaelic Ó Crabhdin Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Craven?
- A machine transcription gives /kɹeɪvən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Craven have the most bearers?
- Craven is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Craven?
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/cravenThe 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, “Craven”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.