Genealogy /
Bies ancestry [10]
Thanks so much for your response, and esp. for the link to the mapping program. So, this connotation of evil or devil begs the question: how did this become a surname? It is not common across languages/culture for this to be a last name (at least in modernity). Was it common at some point? Is it a shortened form of some other last name? In German, the word is associated with "reed". Yet, we are told the name is Polish, and might have been part of a Jewish migration to the Alsace Lorraine area, and then to other points globally. Any one know of any of this? Or other explanations?