Record Atlas
Slovenia · United States of America · Belgium

Burja

Burja. Attested in Slovenia, United States of America, Belgium, borne by about 660 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.

Buria

Only sounds alike

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

BuraBurjBarjaBerjaBorjaBurraBourja

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.

  • Berja Spain pop. 15,035 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Bura Kenya pop. 6,496 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Borja Spain pop. 4,375 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Burra Australia pop. 1,149 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Bura Italy pop. 24 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Barja Spain only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 3 countries: Slovenia, United States of America, BelgiumBelgium — 5 peopleUnited States of America — 117 peopleSlovenia — 538 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 3 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 people in 1 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Kraainem with 5. 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.
1 place drawn, the largest being KraainemKraainem — 5

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.

Slovenia

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

Whose archive to write to

85 of 1,585 volumes held for Slovenia overlap the 1900s — the decades Burja is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Burja. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records. See everything this atlas holds for Slovenia →

United States of America

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

Whose archive to write to

25,526 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1940s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Burja is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Burja. 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 →

Belgium

5 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 Burja in Belgium, so it cannot narrow Belgium's 24,426 volumes by date — see Belgium's own page for all of it.

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.

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 → …
United States of America
Belgium

Find Burja on the map →

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