Family name origins & meanings
- Italian : from grifo ‘gryphon’ (Latin gryphus, Greek gryps, of Assyrian origin), hence a nickname for someone thought to resemble the mythical beast
- Italian Griffò : probably from Grifo, Crifo, derived from Greek kryphos ‘secret’, ‘hidden’, ‘enigmatic’.
- Perhaps a respelling of French Griffaud, which Morlet speculates may be from one of the Germanic compound personal names beginning with the element grif, a derivative of Old High German grifan ‘to grasp or seize’.