Bâlë
surname · Latin script
Bâlë is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English bale (“evil”), from Old English bealu, from Proto-West Germanic *balu, from Proto-Germanic *balwą.
- NONorway1 in 23K(measured from records)
- SISlovenia1 in 60K
- USUnited States1 in 117K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bâlë itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 20 (measured from records)
- 1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
5,883 named Bijl, 2007
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Bijl in NL Netherlands and Bale in US United States.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)- Middle Englishbale“evil”(measured from records)
- Old Englishbealu(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*balu(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*balwą(measured from records)
From Middle English bale (“evil”), from Old English bealu, from Proto-West Germanic *balu, from Proto-Germanic *balwą. Cognate with Low German bal- (“bad, ill”), Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌻𐍅𐌴𐌹𐌽𐍃 (balweins, “torture”), Old High German balo (“destruction”), Old Norse bǫl (“disaster”).
Cited for this meaning 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Bâlë counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 5,883as Bijl | 1 in 2.9K | 5.9K | Bijl | 9 |
| US United States | 2,843 | 1 in 117K | 2.8K | Bale | 7 |
| IN India | 1,980 | 1 in 670K | 2K | — | 2 |
| NO Norway | 242 | 1 in 23K | 242 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 173as Bijl | 1 in 68K | 173 | — | — |
| SI Slovenia | 35 | 1 in 60K | 35 | — | 1 |
5,883 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Bâlë mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English bale (“evil”), from Old English bealu, from Proto-West Germanic *balu, from Proto-Germanic *balwą. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
- In which country does Bâlë have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 5.9 thousand people named Bijl, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Bâlë most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bâlë is densest in Norway — about 1 in 23 thousand people — even though Netherlands holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bâlë?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,843 people named Bâlë in 2010, about 1 in 117 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bâlë?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/b%C3%A2l%C3%ABThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Bâlë”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.