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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Catalan and Spanish : from bolla ‘sphere’, ‘ball’. How it was acquired as a surname is unclear; it may have been a nickname for a fat person. In Spanish bolla is also a regional term denoting various types of cakes and pastries and in some cases the surname may have arisen from this sense.
  • Hungarian : variant of Balla, pet form of the personal name Barabás, or Barnabás (see Barnaby).

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