Record Atlas
France · United States of America · Spain · Belgium · Slovenia

Beliš

Beliš. Attested in France, United States of America, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, borne by about 968 people in the registers this map holds.

The same name, spelt two ways

One systematic substitution — s for z, w for v, ch for h — where BOTH spellings are independently attested surnames. Kosina and Kozina are one man in two clerks' handwriting. Stronger than sounding alike, weaker than somebody having checked.

BelizBellis

Only sounds alike

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

BelsBlisBaliśBelasBelesBellsBelośBelus

It is also the name of a place

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.

  • Belas Portugal pop. 21,019 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Bells United States of America pop. 2,447 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 5 countries: France, United States of America, Spain, Belgium, SloveniaSlovenia — 28 peopleBelgium — 153 peopleSpain — 156 peopleUnited States of America — 256 peopleFrance — 375 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 5 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. 153 people in 16 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Antwerpen with 29. 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.
16 places drawn, the largest being Antwerpen, Aartselaar, Rumst, Kortenberg, Boom, Edegem, Leuven, Kontich, Mortsel, BonheidenSint-Niklaas — 5Duffel — 5Haacht — 6Mechelen — 6Schoten — 6Huldenberg — 7Bonheiden — 8Mortsel — 8Kontich — 8Leuven — 9Edegem — 9Boom — 10Kortenberg — 11Rumst — 11Aartselaar — 15Antwerpen — 29

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

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

Whose archive to write to

5 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1910s, 1920s, 1950s and 1970s — the decades Beliš is attested here. None is known to name Beliš: 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

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

Whose archive to write to

25,361 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1940s, 1970s and 1990s — the decades Beliš is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Beliš. The commonest kinds: Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for United States of America →

Spain

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

Whose archive to write to

65 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1960s — the decades Beliš is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Beliš. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records. See everything this atlas holds for Spain →

Belgium

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

Whose archive to write to

3,743 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1830s, 1930s and 1950s — the decades Beliš is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Beliš. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Belgium →

Slovenia

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

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Beliš in Slovenia, so it cannot narrow Slovenia's 1,585 volumes by date — see Slovenia's own page for all of it.

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 16
  • 1901–1910 36
  • 1911–1920 31
  • 1921–1930 35
  • 1931–1940 32
  • 1941–1950 60
  • 1951–1960 49
  • 1961–1970 26
  • 1971–1980 43
  • 1981–1990 29
  • 1991–2000 18

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
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 → …

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

Find Beliš on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable