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Lin

Lin, also written Hayashi. Attested in United States of America, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark, Ireland, borne by about 102,550 people in the registers this map holds.

Also written

A person linked these — Wikidata's «said to be the same as», or a family archive that worked it out from documents.

Hayashi

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.

LinnLlin

Only sounds alike

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

LanLeńLonLunLynLønLainLein

What Wikidata says this name is

Copied from Wikidata, not worked out here. It is crowd-sourced and wrong in places, which is why the item is linked below rather than the claim simply repeated.

  • Chinese · multiple languages the language of the name

    Which is not where a family is from. A Polish surname can be borne by people whose forebears never saw Poland, and often is.

  • Read about it on Wikipedia ↗ an article, with its own sources

Q124713830 on Wikidata ↗ — the item every line above came from.

What Wiktionary says this name is

Copied from the surname template on Wiktionary, not worked out here, and not from its etymology prose. Anyone may edit it; the page and the revision it was read at are linked below.

  • Chinese · Mandarin · Gan · Wu · Xiang what the English entry says it is from
  • English · Czech recorded as a surname in these languages

    A language here is the language of the NAME, not a country a family came from — the same caveat the Wikidata section carries, and worth repeating rather than assumed read.

Lin on Wiktionary ↗ — read at revision 85764056. Text from Wiktionary, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

It is also the name of a place

2 places drawn, the largest being Linn, LinnLinn — 1,429Linn — 5,911
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.

  • Linn Germany pop. 5,911 a spelling of the name
  • Linn United States of America pop. 1,429 a spelling of the name
  • Lun Croatia pop. 148 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Lon Italy pop. 122 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Lon United States of America pop. 78 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Lain Italy pop. 7 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 9 countries: United States of America, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark, IrelandDenmark — attested, not countedIreland — attested, not countedPoland — 47 peopleSlovenia — 71 peopleBelgium — 562 peopleFrance — 1,397 peopleItaly — 5,725 peopleSpain — 15,240 peopleUnited States of America — 79,508 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 9 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. 562 people in 50 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Antwerpen with 92. 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.
50 places drawn, the largest being Antwerpen, Leuven, Brussel, Gent, Luik, Ukkel, Binche, Namen, Brugge, CharleroiHalle — 5Evere — 5Sint-Agatha-Berchem — 5Geel — 5Arendonk — 5Flémalle — 6Aalst — 6Oostende — 6Sint-Joost-ten-Node — 6Ganshoren — 6Vorst — 6Mechelen — 6Lanaken — 7La Louvière — 7Lokeren — 7Lievegem — 7Roeselare — 7Eigenbrakel — 7Anderlecht — 7Zoersel — 7Manage — 8Jette — 8Elsene — 8Lier — 8Riemst — 9Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe — 9Etterbeek — 9Kontich — 9Bergen — 10Grimbergen — 11Charleroi — 13Brugge — 13Namen — 15Binche — 15Ukkel — 16Luik — 24Gent — 31Brussel — 31Leuven — 50Antwerpen — 92

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.

United States of America

79,508 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

334,111 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1740s, 1750s, 1770s, 1790s, 1800s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Lin is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Lin. 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

15,240 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

6,571 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1900s, 1910s, 1940s and 1980s — the decades Lin is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Lin. 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 →

Italy

5,725 Borne — a state counted them — Italian comuni publishing their residents' surnames as open data, indexed by the national catalogue dati.gov.it..

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lin in Italy, so it cannot narrow Italy's 1,288,913 volumes by date — see Italy's own page for all of it.

France

1,397 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

Lin 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.

Belgium

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

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lin in Belgium, so it cannot narrow Belgium's 24,426 volumes by date — see Belgium's own page for all of it.

Slovenia

71 Borne — a state counted them — Family names, Slovenia, 2026 (SURS tables 05X1015S–05X1018S).

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lin in Slovenia, so it cannot narrow Slovenia's 1,585 volumes by date — see Slovenia's own page for all of it.

Poland

47 Borne — a state counted them — Nazwiska występujące w rejestrze PESEL (z uwzględnieniem osób zmarłych).

Whose archive to write to

961 of 15,686 volumes held for Poland overlap the 1930s — the decades Lin is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Lin. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for Poland →

Denmark

Borne — a state counted them — Navne registreret i Danmark, January 2020 (Danmarks Statistik, republished by Digitaliseringsstyrelsen).

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

Lin is attested in Denmark in the 1990s. Not one of the 4,099 volumes this atlas holds for Denmark covers those years — worth knowing before an afternoon is spent on Denmark's shelf rather than after.

Ireland

Borne — a state counted them — Surnames of babies with ten or more occurrences, 2023–2025 (CSO, VSA110).

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Lin in Ireland, so it cannot narrow Ireland's 1,568 volumes by date — see Ireland'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 13
  • 1901–1910 34
  • 1911–1920 40
  • 1921–1930 64
  • 1931–1940 56
  • 1941–1950 84
  • 1951–1960 120
  • 1961–1970 101
  • 1971–1980 109
  • 1981–1990 236
  • 1991–2000 540

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
Italy
  • Carnia, Friuli 6 eras Patriarchate of Aquileia → Republic of Venice → Austria → Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy → …
  • Campania — Caserta and Naples 5 eras Kingdom of Naples → Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Kingdom of Italy → …
  • Eastern Sicily — Catania 4 eras Kingdom of Sicily → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Kingdom of Italy → Italy
  • Calabria 4 eras Kingdom of Naples → Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Italy
  • Carniola and the Slovene lands 8 eras Inner Austria → Austria → The Illyrian Provinces → Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, then Yugoslavia → …
France
Belgium
Slovenia
  • Central Istria 8 eras Aquileia → Habsburg → Napoleonic → Austria–Hungary → …
  • Carniola and the Slovene lands 8 eras Inner Austria → Austria → The Illyrian Provinces → Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, then Yugoslavia → …

Regions are also drawn in 3 other countries where this name is attested, further down the register's own list. The order here is how many people a register counted, so the countries above are the ones the name most belongs to.

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

Find Lin on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable