This surname of GRIMES was a baptismal name ‘the son of Grimme’ a favourite 11th century font name, now forgotten. It was popular as a given name in the form GRIM in Anglo-Scandinavian areas well into the 12th century, and was brought into England during the wake of the Norman Invasion of 1066.
The names introduced into Britain by the Normans during the Invasion of 1066 were of three kinds. There were names of Norse origin which their ancestors had carried into Normandy; names of Germanic origin which the Frankish conquerors had brought across the Rhine and which had ousted the old Celtic and Latin names from France, and Biblical names and names of Latin and Greek saints. These names they retained even after the customs and language of the natives of Northern France had been adopted by them.
After the Norman Conquest not only Normans, but Frenchmen and Bretons from other parts of France settled in England, and quite a few found their way north into Scotland. Early records of the name mention Grimere (without surname) listed as a tenant in the Domesday Book of 1066. Godwin Bernard Grimmer of Yorkshire, was listed in the Yorkshire Poll Tax of 1379. Ellen Grymere, of Chester, was listed in the Wills at Chester in 1545. Many factors contributed to the establishment of a surname system.
For generations after the Norman Conquest of 1066 a very few dynasts and magnates passed on hereditary surnames, but the main of the population, with a wide choice of first-names out of Celtic, Old English, Norman and Latin, avoided ambiguity without the need for a second name. As society became more stabilized, there was property to leave in wills, the towns and villages grew and the labels that had served to distinguish a handful of folk in a friendly village were not adequate for a teeming slum where perhaps most of the householders were engaged in the same monotonous trade, so not even their occupations could distinguish them, and some first names were gaining a tiresome popularity, especially Thomas after 1170.
The hereditary principle in surnames gained currency first in the South, and the poorer folk were slower to apply it. By the 14th century however, most of the population had acquired a second name.