Meaning & origin
What it means
Greene is a form of Green. Green goes back to a word meaning “lawn.”
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Where it comes from
Greene is a form of Green. Green comes from German, and ultimately from Irish.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1882. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Greene through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 121
- 121 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 1919
- 9 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 5 in 1948. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 132 as a first name in 2020; 122,836 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Greene’s family of names
In English usage, Greene as a surname has a related form in GREEN.
Inner ring: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 1
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Across languages 1
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named Greene
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
Similar names
If you love Greene, these share its style, era, origin or sound, from outside its own family.
Grove
“hunger + wolf” · “ditch, grave”
>99% boys
Pringle
“enclosed valley”
>99% boys
Etheridge
“noble ruler”
>99% boys
Lytle
“small, (ironic) big, not much, younger”
>99% boys
Chew
“gill”
>99% boys
Welch
Welch is a surname from Middle English, ultimately from Proto-Germanic.
>99% boys
Gene
“a wellborn man” · “a wellborn woman”
98% boys · 2% girls
Milner
“miller”
>99% boys