Record Atlas
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Sory

Sory. Attested in United States of America, France, Belgium, Spain, Poland, borne by about 498 people in the registers this map holds.

The same name, inflected

A rule of the language rather than an opinion. Polish makes Kowalski and Kowalska of one surname.

Sora

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.

ŻoryŠori

Only sounds alike

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

SorSarySirySoreSoruSurySéry

It is also the name of a place

6 places drawn, the largest being Żory, Sora, Sori, Sori, Sora, SoraSora — 1Sora — 446Sori — 2,888Sori — 7,020Sora — 23,758Żory — 63,174
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.

  • Żory Poland pop. 63,174 a spelling of the name
  • Sora Italy pop. 23,758 a spelling of the name
  • Sori Kenya pop. 7,020 a spelling of the name
  • Sori Italy pop. 2,888 a spelling of the name
  • Sora Slovenia pop. 446 a spelling of the name
  • Sora Germany a spelling of the name

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 5 countries: United States of America, France, Belgium, Spain, PolandPoland — 5 peopleSpain — 26 peopleBelgium — 36 peopleFrance — 159 peopleUnited States of America — 272 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. 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. 36 people in 3 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Moeskroen with 20. 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.
3 places drawn, the largest being Moeskroen, Doornik, PecqPecq — 6Doornik — 10Moeskroen — 20

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

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

Whose archive to write to

64,090 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1920s — the decades Sory is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Sory. 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

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

Whose archive to write to

118 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1800s, 1940s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Sory is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Sory. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Belgium

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

Spain

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

Whose archive to write to

2,475 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1550s and 1770s — the decades Sory is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Sory. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Probate, land and notarial. See everything this atlas holds for Spain →

Poland

5 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 Sory in Poland, so it cannot narrow Poland's 15,686 volumes by date — see Poland'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 8
  • 1901–1910 13
  • 1911–1920 14
  • 1921–1930 23
  • 1931–1940 20
  • 1941–1950 19
  • 1951–1960 12
  • 1961–1970 9
  • 1971–1980 18
  • 1981–1990 8
  • 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
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 → …

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

Find Sory on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable