Grob

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Grimley 1. English: habitation name from a place in Worcs., probably so called from an OE personal name, Grima (see Grime) + OE leah wood, clearing (A dictionary of surnames)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024

/ɡɹɑb/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary

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Grob is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Switzerland than in any other country: 3,636 people, counted by BFS in 2024.

  • CHSwitzerland1 in 2.3K(measured from records)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 24K
  • DEGermany≈1 in 32K

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.

Switzerland (measured from records)

3,636 people, 2024

Record sources
262 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

How to pronounce Grob

  • English:/ɡɹɑb/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
  • Spanish:/ɣɾoβ/(machine-generated) model-generated

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

Grimley 1. English: habitation name from a place in Worcs., probably so called from an OE personal name, Grima (see Grime) + OE leah wood, clearing. 2. Irish: var. of Gormley. boorish individual, from Ger. and Yid. grob coarse, crude (MHG g(e)rop, OHG g(e)rob). As a Jewish name it may sometimes have denoted a fat man, since Yid. grob also means ‘fat’.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Grob is found

(measured from records)

Grob 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 Grob is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CH Switzerland#1613,6361 in 2.3K3.6KGrob93
DE Germany—≈2,600 est.≈1 in 32K—Grob99
US United States—1,6671 in 200K1.7KGrob262
NL Netherlands—7261 in 24K726Grob30
FR France—≈500 est.≈1 in 138K54—2
AT Austria—≈92 est.≈1 in 100K—Grob19

3,636 people counted by BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames), 2024. 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)

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

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Switzerland, United States, Netherlands

    Also written Gröb

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Chile, United States, Argentina, Switzerland

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Gröb, Grőb

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Gröb

  • Croatian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Switzerland, Netherlands, United States, Croatia

    Languages: Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian

    Also written Gröb, Гроб

38 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)

Grob 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 German, boorish individual, from Ger. and Yid. grob coarse, crude (MHG g(e)rop, OHG g(e)rob). As a Jewish name it may sometimes have denoted a fat man, since Yid. grob also means ‘fat’. Vars.: Ger.: Grobe, Grobmann. Grobman, Grobard see Gray

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • from Yiddish grob, cognate with 1, which also means ‘fat’ and may have been applied in this sense.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • nickname for a strong, heavy man, or for a lout, from Middle High German g(e)rop ‘coarse’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In German, coarse, rude, gross

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German

  • In German, coarse, rough

    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)
190019502000Henri Grob, b. 1904Charles S. Grob, b. 1950Ella Hunt, b. 1998
  • Henri Grobb. 1904CHSwiss chess player, International Master (1904–1974)
  • Charles S. Grobb. 1950USAmerican psychiatrist, professor, and researcher
  • Ella Huntb. 1998GBnot in their usual nameEnglish actress

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 Grob,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

27 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Grob come from?
Grimley 1. English: habitation name from a place in Worcs., probably so called from an OE personal name, Grima (see Grime) + OE leah wood, clearing. 2. Irish: var. of Gormley. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
What are other forms of the name Grob?
In the etymology graph, Грубый and Gruff are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Grob?
It depends on the language: in English /ɡɹɑb/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /ɣɾoβ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
What does the name Grob mean?
Recorded meaning: Grimley 1. English: habitation name from a place in Worcs., probably so called from an OE personal name, Grima (see Grime) + OE leah wood, clearing.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Grob?
In Switzerland, the national register counted about 3.6 thousand people named Grob, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled grob. After it come Germany, United States, Netherlands and France; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Grob most common?
Grob is densest in Switzerland, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.3 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Grob?
In Switzerland, the national register counted 3,636 people named Grob in 2024, about 1 in 2.3 thousand residents.
How common is Grob compared with other names?
In Switzerland, Grob is the 161st most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Grob?

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

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, “Grob” — ranked 186th in Switzerland (BFS, 2024). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Grob parses inside a full name →