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).