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Nani

Nani. Attested in United States of America, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, borne by about 493 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.

NanniNany

Where it came from

No place of this name is in the gazetteer, so this map says nothing about where the name came from. Search a surname anywhere else and you will be told an origin — that it is Latin, or Italian, or means «joyful». That is etymology, it is usually unsourced, and it is a different question from the one answered here.

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 6 countries: United States of America, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, DenmarkDenmark — attested, not countedBelgium — 12 peopleItaly — 42 peopleFrance — 76 peopleSpain — 108 peopleUnited States of America — 255 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 6 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. 12 people in 2 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Jette with 7. 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.
2 places drawn, the largest being Jette, Vresse-sur-SemoisVresse-sur-Semois — 5Jette — 7

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

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

Whose archive to write to

85,818 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1910s and 1950s — the decades Nani is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Nani. 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

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

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Nani in Spain, so it cannot narrow Spain's 35,936 volumes by date — see Spain's own page for all of it.

France

76 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

Nani is attested in France in the 1940s. 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.

Italy

42 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

823,874 of 1,288,913 volumes held for Italy overlap the 1430s, 1550s, 1560s, 1610s, 1690s, 1710s, 1720s, 1750s, 1800s, 1830s, 1840s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s — the decades Nani is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Nani. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Italy →

Belgium

12 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 Nani in Belgium, so it cannot narrow Belgium's 24,426 volumes by date — see Belgium'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 Nani 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 1
  • 1901–1910 7
  • 1911–1920 4
  • 1921–1930 6
  • 1931–1940 9
  • 1941–1950 6
  • 1951–1960 9
  • 1961–1970 6
  • 1971–1980 12
  • 1981–1990 1
  • 1991–2000 15

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
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 → …
Belgium
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 Nani on the map →

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