Look up a surname
Every spelling a surname takes, and the countries it is attested in. Built to answer the other way in: not «where is this place» but «I have a name and nothing else».
By country — where the names come from
A count here is how many surnames that country's national register names. It measures which registers have been harvested, not where a name is borne: 11 countries have one, 25 are named only by a family archive, and 116 have nothing at all — which is the list worth shortening.
-
- Places
- 14
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 3
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 293
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 42
no register harvested — 18 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 10
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 248
- Archives
- 5
- Collections
- 46
no register harvested — 30 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 551
- Archives
- 4
- Collections
- 18
no register harvested — 16 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 1
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 22
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 11
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 7
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 353
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 16
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 676
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 23
104,060 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 7
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 10
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 45
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 4
no register harvested — 7 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 33
- Archives
- 4
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1,432
- Archives
- 7
- Collections
- 50
no register harvested — 2 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 28
- Archives
- 30
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 27
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 461
- Archives
- 3
- Collections
- 116
no register harvested — 2 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 199
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 6
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 31
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 251
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 15
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 48
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 7
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1,209
- Archives
- 22
- Collections
- 2
141 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 17
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 3
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 4,318
- Archives
- 9
- Collections
- 10
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 118
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 28
290,156 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 3
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 120
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 11
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 61
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 6
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 82
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 5
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 49
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 14
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 6
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 19
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 8
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 100
- Archives
- 205
- Collections
- 117
218,979 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 36
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 670
- Archives
- 37
- Collections
- 88
no register harvested — 5 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 17
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 5
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 14
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 0
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 7
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 5
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 5
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 207
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 29
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 11
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 157
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 5
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 0
no register harvested — 4 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 24
- Archives
- 5
- Collections
- 7
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 8
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 5
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 77
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 11
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 38
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 18
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 32
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 2,153
- Archives
- 5
- Collections
- 34
908 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 13
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 8,455
- Archives
- 129
- Collections
- 258
31,017 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 14
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 5
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 49
- Archives
- 3
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 5
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 40
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 14
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 15
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 10
- Archives
- 3
- Collections
- 14
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 111
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 7
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 23
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1,236
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 69
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 146
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 16
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 28
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 12
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 14
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 506
- Archives
- 4
- Collections
- 37
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 56
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 10
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 46
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 4
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 70
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 16
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 15
3,595 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 3
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 31
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 6
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 21
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 47
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 8
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 31
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 31
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 668
- Archives
- 3
- Collections
- 48
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 685
- Archives
- 8
- Collections
- 7
259,445 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 293
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 39
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 78
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 10
no register harvested — 2 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 43
- Archives
- 3
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1,064
- Archives
- 3
- Collections
- 40
no register harvested — 7 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 9
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 3
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 10
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 3
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 12
- Archives
- 6
- Collections
- 0
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 5
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 3
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1,273
- Archives
- 4
- Collections
- 3
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 243
- Archives
- 8
- Collections
- 2
28,342 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 396
- Archives
- 3
- Collections
- 33
no register harvested — 104 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 17
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 5
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1,765
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 47
86,177 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 10
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 205
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 31
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 58
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 24
no register harvested — 2 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 81
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 1,173
- Archives
- 5
- Collections
- 40
no register harvested — 1 name known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 2,845
- Archives
- 10
- Collections
- 200
no register harvested — 5 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 3,862
- Archives
- 4
- Collections
- 1,742
167,408 names in its national register
-
- Places
- 26
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 6
no register harvested — 38 names known only from a family archive
-
- Places
- 6
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 147
- Archives
- 0
- Collections
- 7
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 0
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 0
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 12
- Archives
- 1
- Collections
- 1
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
-
- Places
- 10
- Archives
- 2
- Collections
- 2
0 names — no register harvested, and no archive names one
11 countries have a national register harvested, 25 are named only by a family archive, and 116 have no names at all — which is a gap in this map, not a gap in the record. Sorting by Names in a register puts them together.
- curated — a person linked two spellings. Wikidata's said to be the same as, and the variant clusters seven family archives worked out from documents.
- archive — the name appears in one of those archives, whose ground is known.
- sounds — an algorithm thinks they sound alike. Useful for casting a net, worthless as evidence, and labelled so nobody mistakes it for one.
«Attested in Spain» means the name appears in a dataset held here. It never means the name exists in Spain, and never that it exists nowhere else. This map's blanks are gaps in the map.
Take it away
CC0. No attribution required, no licence travels with it — the sources are Wikidata (CC0) and David Defranceski's own research, and nothing under CC BY was folded in so that this could stay true.
surnames.csv.gz — 12 MB,
one row per surname × variant × country. The practical one.
surnames.json.gz — 19 MB,
the same thing structured, with the evidence tier on every claim.
Both are gzipped: uncompressed they are a sixth of this whole site, which has a gigabyte to live in. Every browser and every data tool reads a .gz without being asked.
Both are large because most of the rows are a national register. If you
want one country's raw frequencies, take it straight from the source instead — they are
in data/frequencies/ in the repository, one file per country, each carrying
its own licence and harvest date.
Sources: Wikidata, instance of family name (Q101352), property P460. CC0.
The seven Defranceski-family archives — David Defranceski's own research.
National surname registers, and for Italy the comuni that publish their own — see data/frequencies/ for each one's source, licence and date.
Phonetic skeletons computed here; algorithmic, not evidence.
The map answers in full
The box at the top of this page finds a name. The map's own panel is where one is answered — the countries a register or an archive attests it in, when it was there, whose archives to write to, and how much paper stands in each. A made page reads like this: García.
A name is a place, so it is drawn
Every surname page carries this: the countries where the registers and archives behind this atlas attest the name, sized by how many people a state counted. Below is García.
A dot is a country, not a place, and a hollow ring is a name attested without being counted. Neither says anything about the countries not drawn — most of the world has no surname register this project can read, and the 6 that do and will not are below.
What it looks like
| Surname | Also written | Attested in |
|---|---|---|
| Aabel | Abel | Denmark, Norway |
| Aadland | Odland · Ådland | Denmark, Norway, United States of America |
| Aaker | Åker | Denmark, United States of America |
| Aakre | Akre | Denmark, Norway, United States of America |
| Aamodt | Aamot · Åmodt · Åmot · Aamoth | Denmark, Norway, United States of America |
| Aamot | Aamodt | Denmark, Norway, United States of America |
| Aamoth | Aamodt | United States of America |
| Aaron | Aron · Aarons · Ahrens | Spain, France, United States of America |
| Aarons | Aaron | United States of America |
| Aarseth | Aarset | Denmark, Norway, United States of America |
| Aarts | Aerts | Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Poland, United States of America |
| Aasland | Åsland | Denmark, Norway, United States of America |
| Abate | Abbate · Abatte | Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, United States of America |
| Abbate | Abate | Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, United States of America |
Where the names are attested
- Denmark ↗ 290156
- Poland ↗ 259446
- France 218979
- United States of America ↗ 167413
- Belgium ↗ 104060
- Spain ↗ 86180
- Italy ↗ 31203
- Slovenia ↗ 28344
- Norway ↗ 3595
- Ireland ↗ 910
- Croatia ↗ 167
- South Africa ↗ 104
- Uruguay ↗ 38
- Australia ↗ 30
- Argentina ↗ 18
- Austria ↗ 16
- Bolivia ↗ 7
- Russia ↗ 7
- United Kingdom ↗ 5
- Germany ↗ 5
- Hong Kong 4
- Brazil ↗ 2
- Canada ↗ 2
- Switzerland ↗ 2
- Puerto Rico 2
- Albania ↗ 1
- Cuba ↗ 1
- Greece ↗ 1
- Czechia ↗ 1
- Serbia ↗ 1
- Turkey ↗ 1
- Hungary ↗ 1
- Paraguay ↗ 1
- Fiji ↗ 1
- India ↗ 1
- Ukraine ↗ 1
943,956 surnames is not every surname in the world, and there is no open dataset that is — the one commercial database claiming twenty-seven million is not redistributable and is not used here.
And it is lopsided, because it is the shape of which governments make it easy. Five national registers are in: Poland's PESEL list of 270,887 — including the deceased, which is what makes it genealogical rather than a directory — the United States' 162,253 from the 2010 Census and 151,671 from 2000, Spain's 86,512 from the population censuses, and Norway's 3,620, which is only names borne by two hundred people or more.
Both American censuses, and the older one earns its place. 5,155 surnames appear in the 2000 list and not in 2010 — a name borne by a hundred people in 2000 and ninety-nine a decade later drops out of the later file entirely. Vanishing names are exactly the ones a researcher is chasing, and a dataset that carried only the most recent snapshot would lose them at the moment they became interesting.
5 countries that are not here, and exactly why
Sought and not obtained. Without this list the next person spends the same afternoon finding the same walls. 6 were re-tested on 2026-09-22 against live endpoints rather than remembered ones, and every refusal held. But retrying is also what closed Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, which had been the weakest verdict here — «not found», meaning only that somebody looked once.
Croatia — queryable, not enumerable — and this file was wrong about it. Some of its names are in the corpus and the rest are not obtainable; the entry below says exactly how far it goes.
- Czechia possible, and refused — the ministry says both re-tested 2026-09-22
RECHECKED 22 September against the national catalogue, and the answer is unchanged and more precise. R23 «Četnost příjmení v ČR», filed 7 May 2024 by the Ministry of the Interior (00007064), still carries status NelzePublikovat — cannot publish. What is new is what sits beside that status. The record asserts `existuje-překážka-dle-z--106-1999-sb: 1` — an obstacle exists under the Act on Free Access to Information — and, in the same breath, `možnost-poskytovat-formou-otevřených-dat: 1`: it IS possible to provide this as open data. The ministry is not saying the data cannot be made; it is saying the data will not be released. That distinction matters for what to do next. Every other country left on this list needs a file found or a gate to lift. Czechia needs somebody to ask — R23 is a request already lodged through the proper channel, and a formal žádost under Act 106/1999 is the route, not a better harvester. Nothing a script does will change this one.
- mvcr.cz/clanek/cetnost-jmen-a-prijmeni.aspx — the page loads and is headed «Archiv», with no file of any kind left on it
- no surname table in the Czech Statistical Office's own catalogue
- mvcr.cz/clanek/cetnost-jmen-a-prijmeni — followed the redirect to mv.gov.cz, which 404s
- data.gov.cz SPARQL — the national open data catalogue, searched for «příjmení»
- one record: «Četnost příjmení v ČR», IRI data.gov.cz/zdroj/podněty-na-data-k-otevření/R23
- data.gov.cz SPARQL, rechecked 22 September: two name records in the whole catalogue — «Četnost jmen v ČR» and «Četnost příjmení v ČR» — and both are entries in the register of REQUESTS, not datasets
- Finland a working lookup for humans; the file is behind the gate re-tested 2026-09-22
RECHECKED 22 September against the DVV's website rather than the open-data portal. Statistics Finland has no names and never did — they belong to the DVV — and the DVV does publish: nimipalvelu.dvv.fi answers, and gives the number of people carrying any forename or surname in the Population Information System. It is a JavaScript application, and the DVV's own page sends anyone wanting the DATA to avoindata.fi, which answers 403 to an identified agent. Guessing at the application's private endpoints until one answered was considered and rejected: it is the same act as climbing the gate, done less honestly. THIS ATLAS DOES NOT CLIMB BOT GATES, and it does not go round the back of them either. Finland stays refused until a human downloads the avoindata file or the gate lifts — and unlike before, we now know exactly which file that is.
- pxdata.stat.fi StatFin — all 135 subject folders, none name-related
- avoindata.fi — HTTP 403 to every request
- avoindata.fi CKAN — 403 to an identified crawler
- pxdata.stat.fi PxWeb — answers, and holds no names
- dvv.fi/en/name-service — the DVV's own page, which offers an interactive lookup and points at avoindata.fi for the dataset
- nimipalvelu.dvv.fi — the lookup itself, which answers 200 to a plain request and is a JavaScript application with no documented API
- Croatia queryable, not enumerable — and this file was wrong about it re-tested 2026-09-22
CORRECTED 22 September, and the correction matters more than the entry. This file said «the API answers now, and holds no names», which was a true statement about the wrong thing: the DZS PxWeb API really does have no surname table, and walking it exhaustively proved only that the data is not THERE. It is at web.dzs.hr/app/imena — the Bureau's own «Names and surnames» application, 2011 census, one name at a time behind an ASP.NET form, with a confidentiality floor of 10. It was found by a reader who simply looked at the statistics office's website, which this project had stopped doing the moment its API said no. A negative from one endpoint is not a negative from an institution, and «I searched the machine-readable catalogue» is not «Croatia does not publish this». It stays in this file because it is still not a corpus. There is no listing endpoint: the application will tell you about a surname you already have and will not tell you which surnames exist, so no amount of polite querying produces the table Slovenia and Italy publish. Brute-forcing the alphabet at a government service to synthesise a list it declines to publish would be taking by volume what it offers by question, and this atlas does not do that. What it does instead is scripts/harvest-croatia-surnames.py: ask only about the 466 surnames the atlas already attests in archives whose declared country is Croatia, and write the answers to data/frequencies/hr.json marked `enumerable: false`. Croatia is therefore no longer a blank — it is a partial, honestly bounded one. Closing it properly needs the table, and the table is not published.
- podaci.dzs.hr CKAN package_search for «prezimena» — no parseable response
- data.gov.hr CKAN package_search for «prezimena» — answers 200 but not JSON
- podaci.dzs.hr CKAN — 404
- opendata.dzs.hr — no answer
- web.dzs.hr/PXWeb/api/v1 — the whole PxWeb tree walked two levels deep, looking for ime/prezime/name in every folder
- web.dzs.hr/app/imena/default_en.aspx — DZS's own «Names and surnames» application, which ANSWERS: HORVAT 21,618, KOVAČEVIĆ 15,160, NOVAK 10,794, from the 2011 Population Census
- Netherlands research database, not open data re-tested 2026-09-22
CBS publishes no surname frequencies. The real Dutch source is the Meertens Nederlandse Familienamenbank, which is a research database rather than open government data. RECHECKED 22 September in the pass that corrected Croatia and closed Denmark: cbgfamilienamen.nl still answers 403 and the Meertens host does not answer at all. This one is unchanged and does not need a cleverer harvester — it needs an email. The letter is written and waiting at docs/letter-meertens.md. Of the five countries left, the Netherlands and Finland are the only two obtainable at all, and both need a human rather than a script.
- opendata.cbs.nl catalogue search — no surname table
- cbgfamilienamen.nl (Meertens familienamenbank) — HTTP 403
- cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/ — still 403
- nfb.meertens.knaw.nl — does not answer at all
- Sweden a lookup and a top-100 table; the full list is not published re-tested 2026-09-22
RECHECKED 22 September against the website rather than the database, after the same check corrected Croatia and closed Denmark. The old verdict — «the tables are retired, not withheld» — was right about PxWeb and incomplete about Sweden. SCB stopped producing name statistics altogether in 2024 and now refers enquirers to Skatteverket. What remains on scb.se is a top-100 surnames table and Namnsök, a working public lookup over every surname with at least ten bearers. So Sweden is Croatia's shape, not Denmark's: the data exists and is answerable one name at a time, and no complete list is published by anybody. A hundred names is not a register and this atlas will not present it as one.
- api.scb.se BE0001 «Namnstatistik» — the folder is listed and its two sub-folders, BE0001D and BE0001G, both answer 400 Bad Request
- api.scb.se/OV0104/v1/doris/en/ssd/BE/BE0001 — the two name folders found, then opened
- api.scb.se/OV0104/v1/doris/en/ssd/BE/BE0001 — 200, lists BE0001D and BE0001G
- api.scb.se/OV0104/v1/doris/en/ssd/BE/BE0001/BE0001G — 400
- api.scb.se/OV0104/v1/doris/sv/ssd/BE/BE0001/BE0001G — 400, so it is not a language problem
- scb.se/namnstatistik — the statistics page itself, not the database
- scb.se Namnsök — a working lookup covering every surname with at least ten bearers among the registered population
- skatteverket.se — where SCB now sends people, and also a search
- Argentina found, licensed, and the host will not answer us re-tested 2026-09-22
The best lead of the sweep and the most frustrating. Argentina's registry of persons publishes surname distribution BY PROVINCE under CC BY 4.0 — the same grain that makes Belgium the richest thing in this directory, for a country where this atlas already holds places and which took a great deal of European emigration. The catalogue entry is real, the licence is clear, the file names are known. datosabiertos.renaper.gob.ar resolves, accepts a TCP connection on 443, and then never completes the TLS handshake, at sixty seconds or at a hundred and eighty. That is not a gate and not a refusal: nothing said no. It may be geography, it may be a server having a bad day. Worth retrying, and worth one person in Argentina fetching three CSVs if it stays shut.
- datos.gob.ar — «Distribución de apellidos en Argentina», RENAPER, CC BY 4.0, three CSVs including surnames by province
- datosabiertos.renaper.gob.ar over https — connects on 443 and the handshake never completes, at 60s and at 180s
- the same host over http — 301 to the https that does not answer