Where the Graham name comes from

Graham began as a place name, the Anglo-French form of Grantham in Lincolnshire. The Domesday Book of the 11th century records that settlement four different ways: Grantham, Grandham, Granham and Graham. The name behind it joins two Old English elements, grand, thought to mean gravel, and ham, the word for a settlement smaller than a village. Read together, they describe a homestead standing on gravel.

The surname belongs to Scotland as much as to England, and it is recorded as a Scottish surname drawn from Old English. Graeme and Grahame stand alongside it as spellings, and Graham later passed into use as a male given name taken straight from the surname.