Record Atlas
Belgium · France · United States of America

Dewitte

Dewitte. Attested in Belgium, France, United States of America, borne by about 4,609 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.

Dewite

Only sounds alike

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

De WitteDewittDe WittDe WetteDe-Vitte

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.

  • De Witt United States of America pop. 5,242 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • DeWitt United States of America pop. 4,655 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 3 countries: Belgium, France, United States of AmericaUnited States of America — 1,067 peopleFrance — 1,644 peopleBelgium — 1,898 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. 1,898 people in 118 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Brugge with 96. 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.
118 places drawn, the largest being Brugge, Gent, Menen, Kortrijk, Roeselare, Zwevegem, Wervik, Deinze, Moeskroen, OostkampKoksijde — 14Eigenbrakel — 14Leuven — 14Zulte — 16Zonnebeke — 16Kortemark — 16Beernem — 16Avelgem — 17Jabbeke — 17Luik — 18Wielsbeke — 19Moorslede — 19Middelkerke — 19Knokke-Heist — 19Puurs-Sint-Amands — 19De Panne — 20Veurne — 22Torhout — 22Wingene — 23Dentergem — 26Harelbeke — 26Izegem — 28Zedelgem — 28Wevelgem — 29Antwerpen — 30Charleroi — 31Oostende — 32Waregem — 35Tielt — 36Pittem — 38Oostkamp — 41Moeskroen — 43Deinze — 52Wervik — 54Zwevegem — 55Roeselare — 57Kortrijk — 69Menen — 70Gent — 81Brugge — 96

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

1,898 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

13,646 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1460s, 1530s, 1580s, 1610s, 1620s, 1730s, 1760s, 1800s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1880s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Dewitte is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Dewitte. 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

1,644 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

226 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1780s, 1830s, 1850s, 1920s and 1940s — the decades Dewitte is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Dewitte. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Censuses and population lists, Probate, land and notarial. See everything this atlas holds for France →

United States of America

1,067 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

434,692 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1720s, 1730s, 1750s, 1780s, 1790s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s — the decades Dewitte is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Dewitte. 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 →

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 46
  • 1901–1910 97
  • 1911–1920 102
  • 1921–1930 161
  • 1931–1940 167
  • 1941–1950 190
  • 1951–1960 187
  • 1961–1970 207
  • 1971–1980 193
  • 1981–1990 158
  • 1991–2000 136

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
United States of America

Find Dewitte on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable