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Wallet

Wallet. Attested in France, United States of America, Belgium, borne by about 4,277 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.

ValletWaletWallettWalleth

It is also the name of a place

2 places drawn, the largest being Vallet, WaletWalet — 1Vallet — 7,483
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.

  • Vallet France pop. 7,483 a spelling of the name
  • Walet United States of America a spelling of the name

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 3 countries: France, United States of America, BelgiumBelgium — 34 peopleUnited States of America — 236 peopleFrance — 4,007 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 3 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. 34 people in 6 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Quiévrain with 8. 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.
6 places drawn, the largest being Quiévrain, Honnelles, Waterloo, Edingen, Hensies, La LouvièreLa Louvière — 5Hensies — 5Edingen — 5Waterloo — 5Honnelles — 6Quiévrain — 8

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

4,007 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

1,028 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1570s, 1580s, 1630s, 1660s, 1700s, 1720s, 1730s, 1750s, 1760s, 1770s, 1800s, 1810s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Wallet is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Wallet. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for France →

United States of America

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

Whose archive to write to

90,021 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1900s and 1930s — the decades Wallet is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Wallet. 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 →

Belgium

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

Whose archive to write to

13 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1960s — the decades Wallet is attested here. None is known to name Wallet: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

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 157
  • 1901–1910 234
  • 1911–1920 231
  • 1921–1930 331
  • 1931–1940 310
  • 1941–1950 417
  • 1951–1960 559
  • 1961–1970 483
  • 1971–1980 422
  • 1981–1990 482
  • 1991–2000 381

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
United States of America
Belgium

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