Grave Family History
Grave Name Meaning
English: occupational name from Middle English greyve ‘steward’, from Old Norse greifi or Low German greve (see Graf). English: topographic name, a variant of Grove. French: topographic name for someone who lived on a patch of gravelly soil, from Old French grave ‘gravel’ (of Celtic origin). North German: either from the northern form of Graf, but more commonly a topographic name from Middle Low German grave ‘ditch’, ‘moat’, ‘channel’, or a habitational name from any of several places in northern Germany named with this word.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press