Gräven
surname · Latin script
Gräven is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English graven, igraven, from Old English grafen, ġegrafen, from Proto-Germanic *grabanaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *grabaną (“to dig, trench”).
- USUnited States1 in 361K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 16K
- NLNetherlands1 in 45K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 233 (measured from records)
- 1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)
≈14,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Graven in US United States, NL Netherlands, NO Norway 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)
- Middle Englishgraven(measured from records)
- Old Englishgrafen(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*grabanaz(measured from records)
From Middle English graven, igraven, from Old English grafen, ġegrafen, from Proto-Germanic *grabanaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *grabaną (“to dig, trench”).
Sources 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wiktionary
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gräven 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 100K | — | Graven | 4 |
| US United States | 921 | 1 in 361K | 1K | Graven | 233 |
| NL Netherlands | 385 | 1 in 45K | 385 | Graven | 38 |
| NO Norway | 344 | 1 in 16K | 344 | Graven | 8 |
| PH Philippines | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 613K | — | Graven | 15 |
| DK Denmark | 68 | 1 in 86K | 68 | — | 1 |
| LB Lebanon | ≈46 est. | ≈1 in 119K | — | Graven | 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 2000; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Gräven is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, definite plural of gräv
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)
- Aleksandrs Grēvensb. 1679LVnot in their usual name1679-1746
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 1 sources across 0 countries.
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
- What does the name Gräven mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English graven, igraven, from Old English grafen, ġegrafen, from Proto-Germanic *grabanaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *grabaną (“to dig, trench”). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary.
- In which country does Gräven have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Gräven in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled graven.
- Where is Gräven most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gräven is densest in Norway — about 1 in 16 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gräven?
- In the United States, the national register counted 921 people named Gräven in 2010, about 1 in 361 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gräven?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gr%C3%A4venThe 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, “Gräven”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.