Record Atlas
Belgium · France · Spain · Denmark · Italy

De Roo

De Roo. Attested in Belgium, France, Spain, Denmark, Italy, borne by about 1,455 people in the registers this map holds.

Only sounds alike

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

DerooDeroDe RoDeroiDerouDeroyDerroDuroo

Where it came from

No place of this name is in the gazetteer, so this map says nothing about where the name came from. Search a surname anywhere else and you will be told an origin — that it is Latin, or Italian, or means «joyful». That is etymology, it is usually unsourced, and it is a different question from the one answered here.

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 5 countries: Belgium, France, Spain, Denmark, ItalyDenmark — attested, not countedItaly — attested, not countedSpain — 25 peopleFrance — 127 peopleBelgium — 1,303 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 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. 1,303 people in 75 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Gent with 130. 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.
75 places drawn, the largest being Gent, Maldegem, Tielt, Brugge, Deinze, Evergem, Aalter, Lievegem, Oosterzele, EekloWichelen — 10Koksijde — 10Oostende — 10Waregem — 10Lochristi — 11Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht — 12Sint-Laureins — 12Roeselare — 12Blankenberge — 12Nazareth-De Pinte — 13Poperinge — 13Zelzate — 14Zedelgem — 14Leuven — 14Destelbergen — 15Pittem — 15Dentergem — 15Oostkamp — 15Beernem — 15Zottegem — 16Charleroi — 18Wetteren — 18Wingene — 18Kortrijk — 19Sint-Lievens-Houtem — 20Ieper — 20Merelbeke-Melle — 24Aalst — 26Antwerpen — 31Assenede — 33Eeklo — 34Oosterzele — 36Lievegem — 37Aalter — 41Evergem — 41Deinze — 51Brugge — 70Tielt — 74Maldegem — 79Gent — 130

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

1,303 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

22,280 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1790s, 1820s, 1830s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades De Roo is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names De Roo. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for Belgium →

France

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

Whose archive to write to

322 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1790s, 1820s, 1900s, 1920s, 1960s and 1980s — the decades De Roo is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names De Roo. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Spain

25 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 De Roo in Spain, so it cannot narrow Spain's 35,936 volumes by date — see Spain'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 De Roo in Denmark, so it cannot narrow Denmark's 4,099 volumes by date — see Denmark's own page for all of it.

Italy

Found in a record — Falco.

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for De Roo in Italy, so it cannot narrow Italy's 1,288,913 volumes by date — see Italy'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 7
  • 1911–1920 10
  • 1921–1930 13
  • 1931–1940 5
  • 1941–1950 7
  • 1951–1960 14
  • 1961–1970 14
  • 1971–1980 20
  • 1981–1990 13
  • 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.

Belgium
France
Denmark
  • Denmark 4 eras Denmark–Norway → Denmark, after the loss of Norway → Prussia, then the German Empire → Denmark
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 → …

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

Find De Roo on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable