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Bah

Bah, also written Bach. Attested in Belgium, United States of America, Spain, France, Slovenia, Italy, Poland, Denmark, borne by about 15,097 people in the registers this map holds.

Also written

A person linked these — Wikidata's «said to be the same as», or a family archive that worked it out from documents.

Bach

Only sounds alike

An algorithm's guess. Useful for casting a net, and not evidence.

BehBihBohBuhByhBaahBahaBahe

What Wiktionary says this name is

Copied from the surname template on Wiktionary, not worked out here, and not from its etymology prose. Anyone may edit it; the page and the revision it was read at are linked below.

  • English recorded as a surname in these languages

    A language here is the language of the NAME, not a country a family came from — the same caveat the Wikidata section carries, and worth repeating rather than assumed read.

Bah on Wiktionary ↗ — read at revision 87349546. Text from Wiktionary, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

It is also the name of a place

5 places drawn, the largest being Bāh, Bach, Bach, Bach, BachBach — 1Bach — 17Bach — 399Bach — 1,759Bāh — 15,359
Where those places are. A dot is a settlement whose name is this surname, sized by its population — not a claim that anybody of the name lives there. Phonetic neighbours are listed below but not drawn: putting a machine's guess on the ground would dress it up as geography.

This is as close to an origin as this map will go. A surname that is also a place name often came from it — and often did not: plenty are occupations or patronymics that happen to collide with a place, and plenty of places are named after a family rather than the other way round. It is a fact with a source, which is more than an etymology page offers.

  • Bāh India pop. 15,359
  • Bach Germany pop. 1,759 a spelling of the name
  • Bach Austria pop. 399 a spelling of the name
  • Bach Italy pop. 17 a spelling of the name
  • Bach United States of America a spelling of the name
  • Boh India pop. 8,482 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 8 countries: Belgium, United States of America, Spain, France, Slovenia, Italy, Poland, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedPoland — 29 peopleItaly — 80 peopleSlovenia — 106 peopleFrance — 945 peopleSpain — 3,444 peopleUnited States of America — 4,690 peopleBelgium — 5,803 people
A dot is a country, not a place. It sits at the country's centre because a national register counts a country; nothing here says where in it these people are. A hollow ring is attested but not counted — Denmark publishes which surnames exist and not how many carry each, and a family archive finds a name without counting heads. Sizing those by a number nobody published would invent it. Blank is not absence. This draws the 8 countries where the eleven registers and eight archives behind this atlas attest the name. Most of the world has no surname register this project can read, and the ones that do and will not are listed with the reason.
Belgium, by commune. 5,803 people in 143 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Brussel with 1,028. This is the only country here that can be drawn this way — every other register counts a country and stops, so a blank elsewhere is a gap in what states publish, not in the name.
143 places drawn, the largest being Brussel, Schaarbeek, Anderlecht, Antwerpen, Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Luik, Seraing, Aalst, Evere, Sint-GillisNinove — 26Ukkel — 27Willebroek — 27Denderleeuw — 28Sint-Pieters-Leeuw — 28Dison — 30Mechelen — 31Flémalle — 32Bergen — 33Verviers — 37Koekelberg — 37Grâce-Hollogne — 38Ans — 38Etterbeek — 42Roeselare — 43Sint-Niklaas — 44Sint-Agatha-Berchem — 46Kortrijk — 49Tienen — 49Essen — 53Leuven — 54Sint-Joost-ten-Node — 58Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe — 59Charleroi — 61Jette — 61Vorst — 67Gent — 68Namen — 71Vilvoorde — 71Elsene — 72Sint-Gillis — 82Evere — 83Aalst — 101Seraing — 155Luik — 271Sint-Jans-Molenbeek — 292Antwerpen — 337Anderlecht — 394Schaarbeek — 629Brussel — 1,028

Country by country

Each country below can carry up to three different kinds of evidence, and none of them is the same claim. A register is a head-count — a state counted these people. A record is one document naming the surname on that ground, narrower evidence and often much older. And a volume overlapping these dates is a document from the right place and years — never a document known to name this surname. None of the three ever means the name exists in that country and nowhere else, or that it exists nowhere but here.

Belgium

5,803 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

18 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1930s — the decades Bah is attested here. None is known to name Bah: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

United States of America

4,690 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

303,643 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1860s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 2000s — the decades Bah is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bah. The commonest kinds: Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for United States of America →

Spain

3,444 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

15,806 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1790s, 1860s, 1890s, 1910s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s — the decades Bah is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bah. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration. See everything this atlas holds for Spain →

France

945 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

820 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1760s, 1790s, 1810s, 1850s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, 1980s and 2000s — the decades Bah is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bah. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Slovenia

106 Borne — a state counted them — Family names, Slovenia, 2026 (SURS tables 05X1015S–05X1018S).

Whose archive to write to

716 of 1,585 volumes held for Slovenia overlap the 1920s, 1940s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Bah is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bah. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records. See everything this atlas holds for Slovenia →

Italy

80 Borne — a state counted them — Italian comuni publishing their residents' surnames as open data, indexed by the national catalogue dati.gov.it..

Whose archive to write to

174,845 of 1,288,913 volumes held for Italy overlap the 1890s, 1930s and 1950s — the decades Bah is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bah. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Italy →

Poland

29 Borne — a state counted them — Nazwiska występujące w rejestrze PESEL (z uwzględnieniem osób zmarłych).

Whose archive to write to

11,188 of 15,686 volumes held for Poland overlap the 1770s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1920s, 1940s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s — the decades Bah is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bah. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials, Probate, land and notarial. See everything this atlas holds for Poland →

Denmark

Borne — a state counted them — Navne registreret i Danmark, January 2020 (Danmarks Statistik, republished by Digitaliseringsstyrelsen).

Whose archive to write to

947 of 4,099 volumes held for Denmark overlap the 1890s, 1900s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Bah is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bah. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Probate, land and notarial, Cemeteries and burials. See everything this atlas holds for Denmark →

When it was being born, in France

INSEE counts births by surname and decade from the état civil, 1891 to 2000 — the only dated evidence in this dataset. A name that starts at zero and climbs arrived; a name that falls to nothing left, died out, or emigrated, and the decade it stops is the decade to stop searching. It counts births registered in France, so a family that emigrated in 1900 simply stops appearing, which is information rather than a defect. This name's first French births fall in 1941–1950 and its last in 1991–2000.

  • 1891–1900 —
  • 1901–1910 —
  • 1911–1920 —
  • 1921–1930 —
  • 1931–1940 —
  • 1941–1950 1
  • 1951–1960 7
  • 1961–1970 38
  • 1971–1980 144
  • 1981–1990 316
  • 1991–2000 439

Whose archive held that ground, and when

Every surname site can tell you a name is common somewhere. This one also knows which filing system held that ground in which years — and those are the two halves of one question: my people were called this, they were there, so who has the paper, and for which century. A name in Croatia before 1881 may sit in a military series and not a county one; a name in the Netherlands before 1811 has no civil record at all, only a baptism.

This is about the ground, not about your family. A register counting a name in a country says nothing about which village. And these are the pieces of a country this atlas has drawn, which in a large one may be a corner of it — Acadia reaches into Maine and is not a statement about the United States, and Bohemia's ground crosses into Poland. Each region's own page says which ground it covers. Where a country is missing below, nothing covers it yet.

Belgium
United States of America
France
Slovenia
  • Central Istria 8 eras Aquileia → Habsburg → Napoleonic → Austria–Hungary → …
  • Carniola and the Slovene lands 8 eras Inner Austria → Austria → The Illyrian Provinces → Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, then Yugoslavia → …
Italy
  • Carnia, Friuli 6 eras Patriarchate of Aquileia → Republic of Venice → Austria → Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy → …
  • Campania — Caserta and Naples 5 eras Kingdom of Naples → Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Kingdom of Italy → …
  • Eastern Sicily — Catania 4 eras Kingdom of Sicily → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Kingdom of Italy → Italy
  • Calabria 4 eras Kingdom of Naples → Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Italy
  • Carniola and the Slovene lands 8 eras Inner Austria → Austria → The Illyrian Provinces → Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, then Yugoslavia → …

Regions are also drawn in 2 other countries where this name is attested, further down the register's own list. The order here is how many people a register counted, so the countries above are the ones the name most belongs to.

No record region is drawn yet for Spain — which is a gap in this atlas and not a statement about that country.

Find Bah on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable