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Grawp is Hagrid's younger full-giant half-brother; however he is called Grawp because when Hagrid found him, that's what he called himself since he couldn't pronounce his real name:

“Well — half-brother,” amended Hagrid. “Turns out me mother took up with another giant when she left me dad, an’ she went an’ had Grawp here —”
“Grawp?” said Harry.
“Yeah . . . well, tha’s what it sounds like when he says his name,” said Hagrid anxiously. “He don’ speak a lot of English. . . . I’ve bin tryin’ ter teach him. . . . Anyway, she don’ seem ter have liked him much more’n she liked me. . . . See, with giantesses, what counts is producin’ good big kids, and he’s always been a bit on the runty side fer a giant — on’y sixteen foot —”
-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chapter Thirty (Grawp).

Is it ever revealed anywhere what Grawp's real name is?

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  • And as a corollary, why couldn’t he speak proper? I mean, with his size, he can hardly be an infant… Whatever language the other, adult giants spoke, he ought at least to be able to speak that at more than grunting level. Feb 26, 2016 at 2:30
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    @JanusBahsJacquet I don't think there's any implication that Grawp couldn't speak Giant (it may have a proper name) properly, but that Hagrid couldn't clearly decipher the sounds of that language, nor indeed of the name of his half-brother in that language. I mean, we have this even among human languages all the time, just listen to the commentators during the olympics, or British news reporters trying to get their tongues around Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
    – Au101
    Feb 26, 2016 at 2:38
  • @Au101 But Hagrid (or Madame Maxime) was perfectly capable of deciphering the names of the other giants, which were presumably also in Giant. You’d also expect, if Grawp could actually speak Giant, that he’d speak it during the books: monolingual children (and he does seem to be a child, at least intellectually) tend to simply speak their own language to others, assuming that everyone can understand them. Grawp never said anything except grunts and growls and the four or so words Hagrid had managed to teach him. Feb 26, 2016 at 2:43
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    The simple answer is no.
    – ibid
    Feb 26, 2016 at 3:19
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    @JanusBahsJacquet Grawp does seem to be a child by giant perspectives (and by his actions as you pointed out). But he has spent some time with Hagrid and travelled with him all the way back to Hogwarts. As young as he seems, maybe Grawp did have enough sense to realize that Hagrid wouldn't understand the language he was trying to speak and hence resorted to grunting and growling to get himself understood. Feb 26, 2016 at 7:23

1 Answer 1

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No.

We don't know much about Grawp, and his real/original name has never been revealed, not even by JK Rowling on Twitter as far as I can find.

We do have a little more 'behind the scenes' information than is in the books, namely the following notes JKR made while writing HP and the Order of the Phoenix, which she released several years ago and which have been kindly transcribed by HP Lexicon:

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Sadly this provides us with almost no extra information about Grawp, even though he and Hagrid get an entire column to themselves (among only 6-7 columns for different strands of the plot!)

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