Record Atlas
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Leys

Leys. Attested in Belgium, France, United States of America, Spain, Denmark, borne by about 3,763 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.

Leis

Only sounds alike

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

LeśLysLaysLeasLeesLejsLeoś

It is also the name of a place

3 places drawn, the largest being Leys, Leis, LeisLeis — 1Leis — 1Leys — 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.

  • Leys United Kingdom
  • Leis Argentina a spelling of the name
  • Leis Spain a spelling of the name
  • Lees United Kingdom pop. 12,630 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Les Spain pop. 755 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Lees Austria pop. 7 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 5 countries: Belgium, France, United States of America, Spain, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedSpain — 20 peopleUnited States of America — 502 peopleFrance — 860 peopleBelgium — 2,381 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. 2,381 people in 147 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Antwerpen with 156. 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.
147 places drawn, the largest being Antwerpen, Heist-op-den-Berg, Lille, Gent, Brugge, Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht, Turnhout, Leuven, Dendermonde, KasterleeOud-Turnhout — 16Nijlen — 16Mechelen — 16Duffel — 16Hasselt — 17Lochristi — 17Tienen — 17Wuustwezel — 17Schilde — 17Stabroek — 18Mortsel — 18Lokeren — 20Vorselaar — 20Geel — 20Ieper — 22Begijnendijk — 22Hulshout — 22Sint-Katelijne-Waver — 23Lier — 25Herenthout — 26Scherpenheuvel-Zichem — 27Berlaar — 33Brasschaat — 35Vosselaar — 37Herselt — 38Schoten — 41Herentals — 42Putte — 42Poperinge — 44Westerlo — 45Kasterlee — 46Dendermonde — 48Leuven — 51Turnhout — 52Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht — 57Brugge — 61Gent — 63Lille — 87Heist-op-den-Berg — 92Antwerpen — 156

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

2,381 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

7,177 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1800s, 1880s, 1920s, 1930s, 1970s and 1980s — the decades Leys is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Leys. 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

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

Whose archive to write to

79 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1820s, 1910s and 1960s — the decades Leys is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Leys. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

United States of America

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

Whose archive to write to

257,661 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1880s, 1890s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1950s and 1960s — the decades Leys is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Leys. The commonest kinds: Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for United States of America →

Spain

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

Whose archive to write to

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

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 Leys 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 37
  • 1901–1910 53
  • 1911–1920 40
  • 1921–1930 77
  • 1931–1940 58
  • 1941–1950 104
  • 1951–1960 97
  • 1961–1970 105
  • 1971–1980 97
  • 1981–1990 86
  • 1991–2000 106

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
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 Leys on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable