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Velle

Velle. Attested in France, Norway, Belgium, Spain, Italy, borne by about 1,165 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.

WelleVele

Only sounds alike

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

VellValléVealeVeileVejleVelgeVelie

It is also the name of a place

2 places drawn, the largest being Welle, VelleVelle — 1Welle — 1,251
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.

  • Velle Spain
  • Welle Germany pop. 1,251 a spelling of the name
  • Vejle Denmark pop. 60,231 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Valle United States of America pop. 832 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Valle Italy pop. 555 only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling
  • Valle Argentina only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 5 countries: France, Norway, Belgium, Spain, ItalyItaly — 18 peopleSpain — 106 peopleBelgium — 242 peopleNorway — 330 peopleFrance — 469 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. 242 people in 23 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Kortemark with 35. 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.
23 places drawn, the largest being Kortemark, Oostende, Ichtegem, Roeselare, Brugge, Koekelare, Gistel, Veurne, Genk, HouthulstZonhoven — 5Zedelgem — 5Oostkamp — 5Rotselaar — 5Hoeilaart — 5Antwerpen — 5Maaseik — 6Torhout — 6Heist-op-den-Berg — 6Gent — 7Bredene — 7Oudenburg — 9Koksijde — 10Houthulst — 10Genk — 11Veurne — 11Gistel — 11Koekelare — 11Brugge — 15Roeselare — 18Ichtegem — 19Oostende — 20Kortemark — 35

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.

France

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

Whose archive to write to

4 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1920s — the decades Velle is attested here. None is known to name Velle: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

Norway

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

Whose archive to write to

Belgium

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

Whose archive to write to

3,983 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1900s and 1950s — the decades Velle is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Velle. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records. See everything this atlas holds for Belgium →

Spain

106 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 Velle in Spain, so it cannot narrow Spain's 35,936 volumes by date — see Spain's own page for all of it.

Italy

18 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

108,241 of 1,288,913 volumes held for Italy overlap the 1860s — the decades Velle is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Velle. 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.

  • 1891–1900 14
  • 1901–1910 29
  • 1911–1920 26
  • 1921–1930 45
  • 1931–1940 42
  • 1941–1950 41
  • 1951–1960 63
  • 1961–1970 62
  • 1971–1980 55
  • 1981–1990 47
  • 1991–2000 45

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.

France
Norway
  • Norway 3 eras Denmark–Norway → Norway in union with Sweden, with its own constitution → Norway
Belgium
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 → …

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

Find Velle on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable