Record Atlas
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De Vreese

De Vreese. Attested in Belgium, France, Poland, Denmark, borne by about 1,115 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.

De Vreeze

Only sounds alike

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

DevreeseDevreseDevresseDevrieseDe VrieseDevriesDe VriesDevrisse

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 4 countries: Belgium, France, Poland, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedPoland — 3 peopleFrance — 281 peopleBelgium — 831 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 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. 868 people in 59 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Gent with 108. 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.
59 places drawn, the largest being Gent, Deinze, Aalter, Merelbeke-Melle, Evergem, Lokeren, Tielt, Nazareth-De Pinte, Brugge, LievegemWortegem-Petegem — 5Lievegem — 5Rochefort — 7Aat — 7Wortegem-Petegem — 7Dendermonde — 7Wingene — 7Roeselare — 7Zedelgem — 7Luik — 8Bilzen-Hoeselt — 9Bergen — 9Zulte — 9Sint-Martens-Latem — 9Berlare — 9Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht — 10Sint-Niklaas — 10Kruisem — 10Wetteren — 10Aalst — 10Zinnik — 11Deinze — 12Antwerpen — 12Lochristi — 14Waregem — 14Gent — 15Gavere — 15Eeklo — 15Destelbergen — 16Zele — 16Beernem — 17Oudenaarde — 18Lievegem — 18Brugge — 22Nazareth-De Pinte — 28Tielt — 28Lokeren — 29Evergem — 32Merelbeke-Melle — 34Aalter — 63Deinze — 78Gent — 108

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

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

Whose archive to write to

20,523 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1750s, 1790s, 1800s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1890s, 1910s, 1970s and 1980s — the decades De Vreese is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names De Vreese. 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

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

Whose archive to write to

389 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1590s, 1810s, 1860s, 1880s, 1910s and 1920s — the decades De Vreese is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names De Vreese. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Poland

3 Borne — a state counted them — Nazwiska występujące w rejestrze PESEL (z uwzględnieniem osób zmarłych).

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for De Vreese in Poland, so it cannot narrow Poland's 15,686 volumes by date — see Poland'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
Attested here, and nothing that survives covers those years

De Vreese is attested in Denmark in the 1970s. Not one of the 4,099 volumes this atlas holds for Denmark covers those years — worth knowing before an afternoon is spent on Denmark's shelf rather than after.

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 11
  • 1921–1930 18
  • 1931–1940 33
  • 1941–1950 25
  • 1951–1960 24
  • 1961–1970 43
  • 1971–1980 40
  • 1981–1990 40
  • 1991–2000 35

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
Poland
  • Pomerania and Danzig 7 eras Duchy of Pomerania → Swedish Pomerania in the west; Brandenburg-Prussia in the east → Prussia → German Empire → …
  • Bohemia 6 eras Kingdom of Bohemia → Austria → Czechoslovakia → Sudetenland and the Reichsprotektorat → …
  • Posen — Prussian Poland 8 eras Poland → Prussia → Duchy of Warsaw → German Empire → …
  • Galicia 6 eras Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia → Poland → Austria → German and Soviet occupation → …
  • Moravia and Silesia 6 eras Margraviate of Moravia → Austria → Czechoslovakia → Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren → …
  • East Prussia 4 eras State of the Teutonic Order → Duchy, then Kingdom, of Prussia → German Empire → Russia in the north; Poland in the south; Lithuania at Memel
  • Silesia 6 eras Habsburg Bohemian crown lands → Prussia → German Empire → Divided → …
  • Congress Poland — the Russian partition 7 eras Russian Empire → Duchy of Warsaw → Kingdom of Poland, in personal union with Russia → Poland, restored → …
Denmark
  • Denmark 4 eras Denmark–Norway → Denmark, after the loss of Norway → Prussia, then the German Empire → Denmark

Find De Vreese on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable