Graff

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: from Old French grafer ‘to write’, a term for a public scribe or scrivener; first attested Robert Graf 1279 RH (Oxfordshire)

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 25K(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 7.9K
  • DKDenmark1 in 15K

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)

≈25,000 people, est.

Sources
406 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 7.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

from Old French grafer ‘to write’, a term for a public scribe or scrivener; first attested Robert Graf 1279 RH (Oxfordshire)

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Graff is read(measured from records)

Graff is one spelling over 3 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.

  • English70%

    from Old French grafer ‘to write’, a term for a public scribe or scrivener; first attested Robert Graf 1279 RH (Oxfordshire)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • Spanish9.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Graff in Spanish.

  • French7.0%

    clipping of graffiti

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

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Graff 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 Graff is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈25,000 est.≈1 in 56K—Graff6
US United States—13,0581 in 25K13KGraff406
FR France—≈2,900 est.≈1 in 23K373—5
ID Indonesia—≈2,800 est.≈1 in 95K—Graff17
BR Brazil—2,7511 in 77K2.8K—1
AR Argentina—2,1591 in 21K2.2K—1
NO Norway—6901 in 7.9K690Graff35
DK Denmark#9373861 in 15K386Graff61
IE Ireland—≈270 est.≈1 in 19K—Graff5
AG Antigua & Barbuda#147———Graff1

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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)

Graff is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, Brazil, United States, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Gräff, Gráff, Grãff

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Canada

    Also written Gräff, Gràff, Gráff

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Gräff

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Gräff

  • Russian surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Türkiye

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Граф, Графф, Graf, Gräff, Gräf

50 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)

Graff is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • metonymic occupational name for a clerk or scribe, from AngloNorman French grafe ‘quill’, ‘pen’ (a derivative of grafer ‘to write’. Late Latin grafare, from Greek graphein).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Welsh, graph (mathematical diagram)

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

  • In Luxembourgish, rough, coarse

    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)

16001700180019002000Dorothea Maria Graff, b. 1678Anton Graff, b. 1736Kasimir Graff, b. 1878Wilton Graff, b. 1903Henry Graff, b. 1921Ilene Graff, b. 1949Randy Graff, b. 1955Todd Graff, b. 1959Agnieszka Graff-Osser, b. 1970Jessie Graff, b. 1984

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).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Graff,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 35 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Graff
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201013K#2,762
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200013K#2,637
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202012K#2,828
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2.8K#3,692
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—2.2K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—690#1,811
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1951516—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1961504—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1941438—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1921414—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—386#1,175
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1901386—

Reference works 9

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 Graff mean, and where does it come from?
from Old French grafer ‘to write’, a term for a public scribe or scrivener; first attested Robert Graf 1279 RH (Oxfordshire) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
How do you pronounce Graff?
A machine transcription gives /ɡɹæf/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Graff have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 25 thousand people named Graff in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled graff.
Where is Graff most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Graff is densest in Norway — about 1 in 7.9 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Graff?
In the United States, the national register counted 13,058 people named Graff in 2010, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
How common is Graff compared with other names?
In Antigua & Barbuda, Graff is the 147th most common surname of 30,187 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Graff?

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

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, “Graff” — the 147th most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Graff parses inside a full name →