Grime
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Grime is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country. In English, recorded as from Grim, a short form of Grimbald, or from Old Norse Grimr / Old English grim 'fierce, grim'; first attested Grim, Grimus, Grimmus 1066 DB.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 93K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 543K
- BZBelize≈1 in 34K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 175 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 34K (inferred from the name graph)
≈710 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Belize, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Grim, a short form of Grimbald, or from Old Norse Grimr / Old English grim 'fierce, grim'; first attested Grim, Grimus, Grimmus 1066 DB
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Grime is read(measured from records)
Grime 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.
- English77%
from Grim, a short form of Grimbald, or from Old Norse Grimr / Old English grim 'fierce, grim'; first attested Grim, Grimus, Grimmus 1066 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Dirt, grease, soot, etc. that is ingrained and difficult to remove.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French6.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Grime in French.
- Spanish5.3%
grime (music genre)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Grime 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 93K | listed | Grime | 126 |
| US United States | 613 | 1 in 543K | 637 | Grime | 175 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 479K | — | Grime | 4 |
| AU Australia | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 151K | — | Grime | 65 |
| EG Egypt | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 631K | — | Grime | 2 |
| NO Norway | 110 | 1 in 50K | 110 | — | 12 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈29 est. | ≈1 in 167K | — | Grime | 7 |
| BZ Belize | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Grime | 1 |
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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Grime 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 sco, To sprinkle, fleck, or to cover with a layer of fine material (e.g. snow, dust).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, grime (a genre of urban music)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Western Frisian, anger, wrath
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)
- Kitty Grimeb. 1930GBBritish journalist, singer and writer (1930-2007)
- John Philip Grimeb. 1935GBBritish ecologist (1935-2021)
- James Grimeb. 1980GBPh.D. 2007
- Helen Grimeb. 1981GBScottish composer
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 17 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 637 | #37,540 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 616 | #34,711 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 613 | #36,477 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 110 | #13,991 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Grime mean, and where does it come from?
- from Grim, a short form of Grimbald, or from Old Norse Grimr / Old English grim 'fierce, grim'; first attested Grim, Grimus, Grimmus 1066 DB Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Grime have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 709 people named Grime in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled grime.
- How common is the name Grime?
- In the United States, the national register counted 613 people named Grime in 2010, about 1 in 543 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Grime?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/grimeThe 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, “Grime”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.