Family name origins & meanings
- North German : topographic name for someone living near a ditch or moat, from Middle Low German grave ‘ditch’, ‘moat’, ‘channel’. Compare Grabe.
- North German : possibly a reduced form of any of various compound habitational names such as Gravenhorst or Gravenstein.
- North German : habitational name from any of several farmsteads so named, from Old Norse grǫf ‘hollow’, ‘depression’.