Grife

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ɡɹɪf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Grife is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 1.8M(measured from records)
  • ESSpain1 in 521K
  • CACanada≈1 in 1.2M

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.

United States (measured from records)

184 people, 2010

Sources
117 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 521K (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Grife 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 Grife is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—1841 in 1.8M195Grife117
ES Spain—961 in 521K96Grife4
BR Brazil—401 in 5.3M40——
CA Canada—≈33 est.≈1 in 1.2M—Grife11
IT Italy—≈32 est.≈1 in 1.9M—Grife1
SG Singapore—≈4 est.≈1 in 1.7M—Grife1
HM Heard & McDonald Islands#537———Grife1

184 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)

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

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, Spain, United States, France

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Grifé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Grifé

  • Hindi name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Grifé

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel

    Also written Grifé

17 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)

Grife 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 goh, first/third-person singular present subjunctive of grīfan

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

  • In gmh, first-person singular present indicative of grīfen

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

  • In Portuguese, designer label

    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)

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)

FormalDear Grife,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 8 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Grife
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020195#99,304
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010184#98,553
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000161#103,193
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—96#28,366
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—96#28,244
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—40#122,472
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

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

How do you pronounce Grife?
A machine transcription gives /ɡɹɪf/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Grife have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 184 people named Grife, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled grife.
Where is Grife most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Grife is densest in Spain — about 1 in 521 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Grife?
In the United States, the national register counted 184 people named Grife in 2010, about 1 in 1.8 million residents.
How common is Grife compared with other names?
In Heard & McDonald Islands, Grife is the 537th most common surname of 1,376 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Grife?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Grife” — the 537th most common surname in Heard & McDonald Islands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Grife parses inside a full name →