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Meÿer

Meÿer, also written Major, Maior, Meier, Meyr. Attested in United States of America, France, Norway, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, Denmark, borne by about 204,687 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.

MajorMaiorMeierMeyrMayrMeiersLohmeyerVon MeyerMaierMeyersMayerMeyerkortMeyercordMeyercordtMeyerheinrichMeyerkoortMeyerkordvon Meyer

Only sounds alike

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

MeerMyerMegerMejerMeuer

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.

  • German 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.

  • Named after Meier what the name is from
  • Read about it on Wikipedia ↗ an article, with its own sources

Q46767 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.

  • German · occupations · Yiddish · patronymics · Danish what the English entry says it is from
  • occupations what the German entry says it is from
  • German what the Portuguese entry says it is from
  • English · Danish · Dutch · German · Portuguese 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.

Meÿer on Wiktionary ↗ — read at revision 92416831. Text from Wiktionary, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

It is also the name of a place

6 places drawn, the largest being Mayer, Maier, Meyer, Major, Major, MajorMajor — 1Major — 1Major — 1Meyer — 31Maier — 304Mayer — 1,903
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.

  • Meyer United States of America pop. 31
  • Mayer United States of America pop. 1,903 a spelling of the name
  • Maier Austria pop. 304 a spelling of the name
  • Major Spain a spelling of the name
  • Major Hungary a spelling of the name
  • Major United States of America a spelling of the name

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 8 countries: United States of America, France, Norway, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedSlovenia — 11 peopleBelgium — 1,286 peopleSpain — 1,299 peoplePoland — 1,828 peopleNorway — 1,876 peopleFrance — 47,492 peopleUnited States of America — 150,895 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 8 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. 1,286 people in 101 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Sankt Vith with 124. 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.
101 places drawn, the largest being Sankt Vith, Antwerpen, Malmedy, Eupen, Büllingen, Amel, Elsene, Luik, Burg-Reuland, CouvinSeraing — 10Schoten — 10Philippeville — 11Verviers — 11Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve — 11Sint-Gillis — 11Gouvy — 12Messancy — 12Lontzen — 12Amay — 12Sint-Pieters-Woluwe — 12Namen — 13Oostende — 13Schaarbeek — 13Gent — 14Leuven — 14Aubange — 15Baelen — 15Charleroi — 15Ukkel — 17Walcourt — 18Weismes — 18Raeren — 18Virton — 19Attert — 20Bütgenbach — 20Florennes — 21Bastenaken — 21Brussel — 21Aarlen — 23Couvin — 25Burg-Reuland — 28Luik — 28Elsene — 28Amel — 31Büllingen — 36Eupen — 40Malmedy — 43Antwerpen — 53Sankt Vith — 124

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

150,895 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

489,625 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1730s, 1740s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Meÿer is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Meÿer. 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 →

France

47,492 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

1,293 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1540s, 1680s, 1730s, 1750s, 1760s, 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Meÿer is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Meÿer. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists, Probate, land and notarial. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Norway

1,876 Borne — a state counted them — Etternavn brukt av 200 personer eller flere (SSB tabell 12891).

Whose archive to write to

Poland

1,828 Borne — a state counted them — Nazwiska występujące w rejestrze PESEL (z uwzględnieniem osób zmarłych).

Whose archive to write to

15,650 of 15,686 volumes held for Poland overlap the 1580s, 1630s, 1650s, 1700s, 1730s, 1740s, 1760s, 1780s, 1790s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 2000s — the decades Meÿer is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Meÿer. 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 →

Spain

1,299 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

8,959 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1860s, 1910s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 2000s — the decades Meÿer is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Meÿer. 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 →

Belgium

1,286 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

23,163 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1490s, 1650s, 1730s, 1740s, 1790s, 1800s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1990s — the decades Meÿer is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Meÿer. 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 →

Slovenia

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

Whose archive to write to

1,258 of 1,585 volumes held for Slovenia overlap the 1670s, 1850s, 1860s, 1880s, 1890s, 1920s and 1930s — the decades Meÿer is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Meÿer. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records. See everything this atlas holds for Slovenia →

Denmark

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

Whose archive to write to

3,740 of 4,099 volumes held for Denmark overlap the 1750s, 1760s, 1780s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Meÿer is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Meÿer. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Probate, land and notarial, Cemeteries and burials. See everything this atlas holds for Denmark →

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 2,932
  • 1901–1910 3,958
  • 1911–1920 3,329
  • 1921–1930 4,422
  • 1931–1940 4,137
  • 1941–1950 4,900
  • 1951–1960 5,557
  • 1961–1970 5,602
  • 1971–1980 4,421
  • 1981–1990 4,156
  • 1991–2000 4,078

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
France
Norway
  • Norway 3 eras Denmark–Norway → Norway in union with Sweden, with its own constitution → Norway
Poland
  • Pomerania and Danzig 7 eras Duchy of Pomerania → Swedish Pomerania in the west; Brandenburg-Prussia in the east → Prussia → German Empire → …
  • Bohemia 6 eras Kingdom of Bohemia → Austria → Czechoslovakia → Sudetenland and the Reichsprotektorat → …
  • Posen — Prussian Poland 8 eras Poland → Prussia → Duchy of Warsaw → German Empire → …
  • Galicia 6 eras Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia → Poland → Austria → German and Soviet occupation → …
  • Moravia and Silesia 6 eras Margraviate of Moravia → Austria → Czechoslovakia → Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren → …
  • East Prussia 4 eras State of the Teutonic Order → Duchy, then Kingdom, of Prussia → German Empire → Russia in the north; Poland in the south; Lithuania at Memel
  • Silesia 6 eras Habsburg Bohemian crown lands → Prussia → German Empire → Divided → …
  • Congress Poland — the Russian partition 7 eras Russian Empire → Duchy of Warsaw → Kingdom of Poland, in personal union with Russia → Poland, restored → …
Belgium

Regions are also drawn in 2 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 Meÿer on the map →

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