Grīva

surname · Latin script

Meaning: estuary, mouth (the place at which a river reaches the sea)

Grīva is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • LVLatvia≈1 in 27K(inferred from the name graph)
  • HRCroatia1 in 211K
  • ARArgentina1 in 364K

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.

Argentina (measured from records)

125 people

Sources
10 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 27K (inferred from the name graph)

Latvia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

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)

estuary, mouth (the place at which a river reaches the sea)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Grīva 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.

Where Grīva is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina1251 in 364K125——
LV Latvia≈69 est.≈1 in 27K—Grīva10
HR Croatia201 in 211K20——
CH Switzerland31 in 2.8M3——
PL Poland31 in 13M3——
CZ Czechia11 in 11M1——

125 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Grīva is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Philippines, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, English, Japanese

    Also written Griva, Griwa

  • Czech name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Griva, Gřiva

2 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Grīva 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 Latvian, dzelzszāle (“Carex nigra”), grīšļu suga

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, ūdenstece Talsu novadā, ietek Rīgas jūras līcī pie Upesgrīvas, izveidojas satekot Sārcenei no Laidzes ezera ar Brantu novadgrāvi, garums - ~14 km; Dārtes upe; Mucupe, Jozupe un Jozupupe (uz leju no Dārtes); Uguņupe (pie Uguņciema); Lāčupe (lejtecē)

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Dzelzceļa stacija Daugavpilī, atrodas pie dzelzceļa līnijas Daugavpils-Kurcums, 7 km no Daugavpils dzelzceļa stacijas, atklāta 1862. g. ar nosaukumu "Kalkuhnen", 1920.-1922. g. saucās "Kalkuni"

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Istras labā krasta pieteka Zaļesjes pagastā, lejtecē arī Zilupes pilsētas rietumu robežupe, iztek no Zaļesjes ezera; Grivka

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Upes posms pie ietekas jūrā, ezerā, ūdenskrātuvē vai citā upē; vieta upes lejtecē, kur ūdens izsīkst, nesasniedzot ieteku

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

190019502000Hilda Grīva, b. 1910Žanis Grīva, b. 1910Gunta Grīva, b. 1959Jānis Svens Grīva, b. 1993
  • Hilda Grīvab. 1910LVLivonian musician, music teacher, founder and artistic director of the Livonian folklore ensemble "Kāndla" (1910-1984)
  • Žanis Grīvab. 1910LVLatvian children's writer (1910-1982)
  • Gunta Grīvab. 1959LVLatvian stage actress
  • Jānis Svens Grīvab. 1993LVLatvian athletics competitor

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 1 sources across 0 countries.

Reference works 1

  • 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 Grīva mean, and where does it come from?
estuary, mouth (the place at which a river reaches the sea) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Grīva have the most bearers?
In Argentina, the national register counted about 125 people named Grīva, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Grīva?
In Argentina, the national register counted 125 people named Grīva, about 1 in 364 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Grīva?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gr%C4%ABva

The 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, “Grīva”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Grīva parses inside a full name →