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Lété

Lété. Attested in Spain, France, Belgium, United States of America, Denmark, borne by about 2,509 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.

LettéLethé

It is also the name of a place

5 places drawn, the largest being Lete, Lete, Lette, Lette, LetheLethe — 1Lette — 1Lette — 1Lete — 1Lete — 1
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.

  • Lete Bosnia and Herz.
  • Lete Spain
  • Lette Australia a spelling of the name
  • Lette Germany a spelling of the name
  • Lethe Germany a spelling of the name

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 5 countries: Spain, France, Belgium, United States of America, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedUnited States of America — 119 peopleBelgium — 330 peopleFrance — 619 peopleSpain — 1,441 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. 330 people in 24 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Bergen with 53. 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.
24 places drawn, the largest being Bergen, Binche, Saint-Ghislain, Quaregnon, Frameries, Anderlues, La Louvière, Charleroi, Bouillon, EigenbrakelLens — 5Sivry-Rance — 6Quévy — 6Zinnik — 7Hensies — 7Courcelles — 7Châtelet — 7Jurbeke — 8Dour — 8Boussu — 8Chièvres — 8Colfontaine — 9Beloeil — 9Manage — 10Eigenbrakel — 11Bouillon — 12Charleroi — 13La Louvière — 15Anderlues — 15Frameries — 16Quaregnon — 17Saint-Ghislain — 33Binche — 40Bergen — 53

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

1,441 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

5,235 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1860s, 1930s, 1940s and 2000s — the decades Lété is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Lété. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration. See everything this atlas holds for Spain →

France

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

Whose archive to write to

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

Belgium

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

Whose archive to write to

14 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1950s — the decades Lété is attested here. None is known to name Lété: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

United States of America

119 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 Lété 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.

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 Lété in Denmark, so it cannot narrow Denmark's 4,099 volumes by date — see Denmark'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 18
  • 1901–1910 40
  • 1911–1920 22
  • 1921–1930 50
  • 1931–1940 44
  • 1941–1950 67
  • 1951–1960 87
  • 1961–1970 82
  • 1971–1980 78
  • 1981–1990 58
  • 1991–2000 73

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
Belgium
United States of America
Denmark
  • Denmark 4 eras Denmark–Norway → Denmark, after the loss of Norway → Prussia, then the German Empire → Denmark

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

Find Lété on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable