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Larena

Larena. Attested in Spain, France, Argentina, borne by about 1,062 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.

Llarena

Only sounds alike

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

LarenLarañaLareneLarinaLerenaLorena

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.

  • Lorena Brazil pop. 89,125 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Laren Netherlands pop. 11,508 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Lorena United States of America pop. 1,737 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 3 countries: Spain, France, ArgentinaArgentina — attested, not countedFrance — 43 peopleSpain — 1,019 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 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.

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

1,019 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

906 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Larena is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Larena. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records. See everything this atlas holds for Spain →

France

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

Whose archive to write to
Attested here, and nothing that survives covers those years

Larena is attested in France in the 1950s. Not one of the 1,513 volumes this atlas holds for France covers those years — worth knowing before an afternoon is spent on France's shelf rather than after.

Argentina

Found in a record — Lerena.

Whose archive to write to

3,123 of 9,060 volumes held for Argentina overlap the 1890s, 1920s, 1970s and 1990s — the decades Larena is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Larena. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Argentina →

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 2
  • 1901–1910 1
  • 1911–1920 5
  • 1921–1930 8
  • 1931–1940 3
  • 1941–1950 1
  • 1951–1960 8
  • 1961–1970 6
  • 1971–1980 1
  • 1981–1990 5
  • 1991–2000 3

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.

France
Argentina

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

Find Larena on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable