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Bibi

Bibi. Attested in Spain, United States of America, Norway, France, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, borne by about 10,286 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.

Biby

Only sounds alike

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

BabiBibaBibbBibeBiboBobiBubi

What Wikidata says this name is

Copied from Wikidata, not worked out here. It is crowd-sourced and wrong in places, which is why the item is linked below rather than the claim simply repeated.

Q19919625 on Wikidata ↗ — the item every line above came from.

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.

  • Hindi what the English entry says it is from
  • 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.

Bibi on Wiktionary ↗ — read at revision 91358667. Text from Wiktionary, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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.

  • Bibā Egypt pop. 94,677 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Bibo China pop. 18,121 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Bobi Côte d'Ivoire pop. 7,299 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Bibo United States of America pop. 140 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Babí Czechia only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 7 countries: Spain, United States of America, Norway, France, Italy, Belgium, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedBelgium — 202 peopleItaly — 211 peopleFrance — 317 peopleNorway — 402 peopleUnited States of America — 2,009 peopleSpain — 7,145 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 7 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. 202 people in 18 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Antwerpen with 53. 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.
18 places drawn, the largest being Antwerpen, Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Gent, Anderlecht, Brussel, Luik, Genk, Sint-Truiden, Schaarbeek, LeuvenFernelmont — 5Maasmechelen — 5Maaseik — 5La Louvière — 5Quiévrain — 5Lokeren — 5Oostende — 5Eigenbrakel — 6Leuven — 6Schaarbeek — 7Sint-Truiden — 8Genk — 9Luik — 10Brussel — 10Anderlecht — 15Gent — 18Sint-Jans-Molenbeek — 25Antwerpen — 53

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.

Spain

7,145 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Bibi in Spain, so it cannot narrow Spain's 35,936 volumes by date — see Spain's own page for all of it.

United States of America

2,009 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

235,151 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1770s, 1780s, 1810s, 1880s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1970s and 1980s — the decades Bibi is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Bibi. 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 →

Norway

402 Borne — a state counted them — Etternavn brukt av 200 personer eller flere (SSB tabell 12891).

Whose archive to write to

France

317 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 — the decades Bibi is attested here. None is known to name Bibi: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

Italy

211 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

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Bibi in Italy, so it cannot narrow Italy's 1,288,913 volumes by date — see Italy's own page for all of it.

Belgium

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

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Bibi in Belgium, so it cannot narrow Belgium's 24,426 volumes by date — see Belgium's own page for all of it.

Denmark

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

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Bibi in Denmark, so it cannot narrow Denmark's 4,099 volumes by date — see Denmark'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 6
  • 1901–1910 6
  • 1911–1920 8
  • 1921–1930 13
  • 1931–1940 12
  • 1941–1950 14
  • 1951–1960 15
  • 1961–1970 36
  • 1971–1980 56
  • 1981–1990 63
  • 1991–2000 88

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.

United States of America
Norway
  • Norway 3 eras Denmark–Norway → Norway in union with Sweden, with its own constitution → Norway
France
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 → …
Belgium

Regions are also drawn in 1 other country 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 Bibi on the map →

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