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Lerena

Lerena. Attested in Spain, United States of America, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa, borne by about 1,735 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.

Llerena

Only sounds alike

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

LerenLernaLarenaLerinaLorena

It is also the name of a place

1 place drawn, the largest being LlerenaLlerena — 5,716
Where those places are. A dot is a settlement whose name is this surname, sized by its population — not a claim that anybody of the name lives there. Phonetic neighbours are listed below but not drawn: putting a machine's guess on the ground would dress it up as geography.

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.

  • Llerena Spain pop. 5,716 a spelling of the name
  • Lorena Brazil pop. 89,125 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Lorena United States of America pop. 1,737 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Lerna United States of America pop. 282 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 7 countries: Spain, United States of America, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, South AfricaArgentina — attested, not countedBolivia — attested, not countedBrazil — attested, not countedUruguay — attested, not countedSouth Africa — attested, not countedUnited States of America — 160 peopleSpain — 1,575 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 7 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

1,575 Borne — a state counted them — Lerena; Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

3,247 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1920s, 1940s, 1950s and 1980s — the decades Lerena is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Lerena. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Probate, land and notarial, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for Spain →

United States of America

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

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lerena in United States of America, so it cannot narrow United States of America's 528,875 volumes by date — see United States of America's own page for all of it.

Argentina

Found in a record — Lerena.

Whose archive to write to

3,634 of 9,060 volumes held for Argentina overlap the 1820s, 1890s, 1920s, 1970s and 1990s — the decades Lerena is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Lerena. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Argentina →

Bolivia

Found in a record — Lerena.

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lerena in Bolivia, so it cannot narrow Bolivia's 1,695 volumes by date — see Bolivia's own page for all of it.

ORDEM E PROGRESSO Brazil

Found in a record — Lerena.

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lerena in Brazil, so it cannot narrow Brazil's 79,582 volumes by date — see Brazil's own page for all of it.

Uruguay

Found in a record — Lerena.

Whose archive to write to

South Africa

Found in a record — Defranceschi; Lerena.

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lerena in South Africa, so it cannot narrow South Africa's 5,287 volumes by date — see South Africa'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.

United States of America
Argentina
South Africa
  • The eastern Cape 6 eras Dutch East India Company → First British occupation → Batavian Republic → Cape Colony → …

No record region is drawn yet for Spain, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay — which is a gap in this atlas and not a statement about those countries.

Find Lerena on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable