Gru

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in French: grits

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: INSEE, 1991

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

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 1.3Mas Grue(measured from records)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 853K
  • ARArgentina1 in 3M

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gru itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Norway (measured from records)

550 named Grue

Record sources
140 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 853K (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)
GrueLatin(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Grue in US United States, NO Norway, GB United Kingdom and 3 more.

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)

Initialism of gated recurrent unit.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

How Gru is read

(measured from records)

Gru is one spelling over 4 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.

  • French39%

    grits

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

  • English19%

    Initialism of gated recurrent unit.

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

  • German17%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Gru in German.

  • Spanish8.2%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Gru in Spanish.

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)

Gru 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 Gru is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NO Norway—550as Grue1 in 9.9K550Grue10
US United States—259as Grue1 in 1.3M259Grue140
FR France—≈250 est.≈1 in 272K44Gru4
DK Denmark—173as Grue1 in 34K173Grue1
GB United Kingdom—≈100 est.≈1 in 644K—Grue46
DE Germany—≈94 est.≈1 in 853K—Gru32
AR Argentina—151 in 3M15——
IE Ireland—≈14 est.≈1 in 375K—Grue8
SC Seychelles#747≈5 est.≈1 in 20K—Grue1

550 people counted by SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)

Gru is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Grü, Grù

  • Italian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy

    Also written Grù

  • Russian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, United States, Israel

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Гру, Ґру, Gro, Gró

37 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)

Gru is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Danish, horror

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

  • In Portuguese, initialism of Guia de Recolhimento de Receitas da União

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

  • ISO 639-3 language code for Kistane.

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

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, dread, horror

    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.

How to address them

(machine-generated)
FormalMadame, Monsieur,Dear Gru, (English)
InformalMadame, Monsieur,Hello, (English)

Evidence

(measured from records)

11 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Gru
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—88#6,215
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)196145—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)199144—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)198137—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)194136—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)195133—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)197131—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)193123—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)192121—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)191118—
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—15—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—14#49,181

Reference works 1

  • Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)

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 Gru come from?
Initialism of gated recurrent unit. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Gru?
In the etymology graph, Grout is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Gru?
A machine transcription gives /ɡʁy/ (IPA) for French.
What does the name Gru mean?
In French, grits
In which country does Gru have the most bearers?
In Norway, the national register counted about 550 people named Grue, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Gru?
In Argentina, the national register counted 15 people named Gru, about 1 in 3.0 million residents.
How common is Gru compared with other names?
In the Seychelles, Gru is the 747th most common surname of 2,002 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Gru?

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

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, “Gru” — the 747th most common surname in Seychelles. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Gru parses inside a full name →