Grab

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Grab is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In English, recorded as To grip suddenly; to seize; to clutch.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 71K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 355K
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 19K

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,100 people, est.

Sources
189 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

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)

topographic name, from Middle High German grabe(n) ‘ditch’, ‘(track alongside a) moat’. This name is also found in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Grab is read(measured from records)

Grab is one spelling over 2 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.

  • English63%

    To grip suddenly; to seize; to clutch.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • German14%

    grave

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German

    from ndwend. 'Weißbuche' or obwend./Czech hrab

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Grab 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 Grab is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany≈1,100 est.≈1 in 71K—Grab79
PL Poland1,0731 in 36K537Grab1
US United States9361 in 355K990Grab189
CH Switzerland4531 in 19K453Grab33
EG Egypt≈330 est.≈1 in 312K—Grab9
TN Tunisia≈93 est.≈1 in 126K—Grab4
NZ New Zealand≈27 est.≈1 in 182K—Grab4

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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)

Grab is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Argentina, Switzerland

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Grãb, Gräb

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Gräb

  • Croatian surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Russia, Serbia

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Граб

  • Ukrainian surname15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Türkiye

    Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Uzbek

    Also written Граб, Hrab, Gräb

28 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)

Grab 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 Polish, topographic name, from Middle High German grabe(n) ‘ditch’, ‘(track alongside a) moat’. This name is also found in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Polish, topographic name from Polish grab ‘hornbeam’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Polish, hornbeam (any tree of the genus Carpinus)

    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)

190019502000Hermann Grab, b. 1903Walter Grab, b. 1919Walter Grab, b. 1927Amédée Grab, b. 1930Wilhelm Gräb, b. 1948Christoph Grab, b. 1967Sylvia Grab, b. 1974Alexandru Grab, b. 1977Sarah Grab, b. 1978Vyacheslav Grab, b. 1993

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 26 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Grab
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000990#23,831
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020978#26,301
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010936#26,143
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026537—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—537#5,920
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026536—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—536#6,093
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024453#2,877
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

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 Grab come from?
topographic name, from Middle High German grabe(n) ‘ditch’, ‘(track alongside a) moat’. This name is also found in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
What does the name Grab mean?
In English, To grip suddenly; to seize; to clutch.
What are other forms of the name Grab?
In the etymology graph, Grave and گرو are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Grab have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 thousand people named Grab in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled grab.
Where is Grab most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Grab is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 19 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Grab?
In Poland, the national register counted 1,073 people named Grab in 2026, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Grab?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/grab

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Grab”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Grab parses inside a full name →