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Bel

Bel, also written Bele, Bell. Attested in France, Spain, United States of America, Belgium, borne by about 10,482 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.

BeleBell

Only sounds alike

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

BalBilBulBylBólBaelBealBeel

It is also the name of a place

6 places drawn, the largest being Bell, Bell, Bell, Bel, Bel, BellBell — 1Bel — 1Bel — 1Bell — 488Bell — 1,534Bell — 36,205
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.

  • Bel Spain
  • Bel United States of America
  • Bell United States of America pop. 36,205 a spelling of the name
  • Bell Germany pop. 1,534 a spelling of the name
  • Bell Australia pop. 488 a spelling of the name
  • Bell South Africa a spelling of the name

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 4 countries: France, Spain, United States of America, BelgiumBelgium — 67 peopleUnited States of America — 427 peopleSpain — 4,889 peopleFrance — 5,099 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. Blank is not absence. This draws the 4 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. 67 people in 8 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Antwerpen with 24. 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.
8 places drawn, the largest being Antwerpen, Mol, Heusden-Zolder, Turnhout, Leuven, Willebroek, Balen, LommelLommel — 5Balen — 5Willebroek — 5Leuven — 6Turnhout — 6Heusden-Zolder — 7Mol — 9Antwerpen — 24

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.

France

5,099 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

736 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1690s, 1820s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Bel is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bel. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Spain

4,889 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

5,127 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1900s, 1920s, 1960s and 1970s — the decades Bel is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bel. 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 →

United States of America

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

Whose archive to write to

502,276 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1750s, 1760s, 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Bel is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bel. 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 →

Belgium

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

Whose archive to write to

4,544 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1530s, 1580s, 1820s, 1910s, 1920s, 1950s and 1970s — the decades Bel is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bel. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Belgium →

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.

  • 1891–1900 248
  • 1901–1910 389
  • 1911–1920 353
  • 1921–1930 477
  • 1931–1940 409
  • 1941–1950 604
  • 1951–1960 608
  • 1961–1970 564
  • 1971–1980 505
  • 1981–1990 509
  • 1991–2000 433

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.

France
United States of America
Belgium

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

Find Bel on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable