Grover
- Pronunciation
- [Gro-ver]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Lives In The Grove
- Origin
- English
About the Name Grover
Grover is an English occupational surname transferred to given-name use, derived from a Middle English word meaning "one who lives or works near a grove" — a grove being a small stand of trees or an orchard. Place-descriptive and nature-descriptive surnames of this type crossed into the given-name column widely during the Victorian era, when surname-names carried associations of landed heritage, rural rootedness, and family lineage. Grover's two-syllable, open sound gave it an affable, unhurried quality that suited the era's preference for plain-spoken masculine names.
Grover appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1884, with its peak rank of #20 recorded in that earliest year of its chart presence. It last appeared in the top-1000 in 1893, at rank #67 — a concentrated window of just under a decade that reflects a specific moment of cultural enthusiasm for the name rather than any lasting mainstream adoption. It does not appear in the top-1000 records tracked here after 1893, which is a marker of rarity rather than disuse in subsequent generations.
No variants are recorded for this name. For parents drawn to Victorian-era surname-names with gentle natural imagery, Grover offers an option that feels both historically grounded and genuinely uncommon in contemporary use — a combination that has drawn renewed attention to similar short, earthy names in recent years as vintage choices cycle back into fashion.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Grover
US Popularity History (1884–1893)
Annual US births named Grover by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1884 with 802 boys named Grover (boy rank #20 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1893, ranked #67 for boys (289 US births). That's 47 places below its 1884 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Compare Grover to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Grover against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).