Meaning & History
From a Scottish surname, originally derived from the English place name Grantham, which probably meant "gravelly homestead" in Old English. The surname was first taken to Scotland in the 12th century by the Norman baron William de Graham [1]. A famous bearer of the surname was Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the Scottish-Canadian-American inventor who devised the telephone. A famous bearer of the given name was the British author Graham Greene (1904-1991).During the 20th century, Graham was more common in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada than it was in the United States. However, it has been rising on the American charts since around 2006.