Record Atlas
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Sofi

Sofi. Attested in Spain, United States of America, France, Belgium, Poland, Denmark, Italy, borne by about 344 people in the registers this map holds.

Only sounds alike

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

SafiSefiSifiSofaSofeSofoSufiSofia

It is also the name of a place

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.

  • Sofia Bulgaria pop. 1,152,556 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Safi Morocco pop. 336,883 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Safi Jordan pop. 15,200 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Safi Malta pop. 2,280 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Safi Italy pop. 23 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Sofia United States of America only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 7 countries: Spain, United States of America, France, Belgium, Poland, Denmark, ItalyDenmark — attested, not countedItaly — attested, not countedPoland — 3 peopleBelgium — 9 peopleFrance — 68 peopleUnited States of America — 107 peopleSpain — 157 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 7 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. 9 people in 1 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Anderlecht with 9. 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.
1 place drawn, the largest being AnderlechtAnderlecht — 9

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

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

Whose archive to write to

6,126 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1890s — the decades Sofi is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Sofi. 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 →

United States of America

107 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census.

Whose archive to write to

17,568 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s — the decades Sofi is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Sofi. The commonest kinds: Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for United States of America →

France

68 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

Sofi is attested in France in the 1960s and 1980s. 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

9 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 Sofi in Belgium, so it cannot narrow Belgium's 24,426 volumes by date — see Belgium's own page for all of it.

Poland

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

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Sofi in Poland, so it cannot narrow Poland's 15,686 volumes by date — see Poland'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 Sofi in Denmark, so it cannot narrow Denmark's 4,099 volumes by date — see Denmark's own page for all of it.

Italy

Found in a record — Mazza.

Whose archive to write to

211,426 of 1,288,913 volumes held for Italy overlap the 1870s, 1900s and 1980s — the decades Sofi is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Sofi. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Italy →

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. This name's first French births fall in 1951–1960 and its last in 1991–2000.

  • 1891–1900 —
  • 1901–1910 —
  • 1911–1920 —
  • 1921–1930 —
  • 1931–1940 —
  • 1941–1950 —
  • 1951–1960 3
  • 1961–1970 17
  • 1971–1980 10
  • 1981–1990 17
  • 1991–2000 21

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

Regions are also drawn in 1 other country 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 Sofi on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable