Jan de Bruin, Sanne van Dam, Hans in ‘t Veld… Dutch last names can look somewhat strange to non-native speakers. Once you know what all these little additions mean, they make a lot more sense, but there are quite a few of them, so it’s easy to lose track. Let’s take a look at some common Dutch surnames and their meanings.
First things first: many Dutch surnames aren’t weird at all. We have perfectly normal equivalents to common names that are derived from jobs, such as Bakker (Eng: Baker) or Smit (Eng: Smith). That’s not really what this one is about, though, so let’s see some of the wonkier stuff.
The son of…
When you go through a Dutch phone book (I haven’t seen one of those in ages!), you’ll find a lot of names ending in -s, -se, or -sen. Oftentimes, this is because they mean something that’s very common in a lot of other languages too, including English: the son (or daughter) of… contraption. This is called a patronymic or patronym (Dutch: patroniem), and we’re hardly the only ones to use it.
While this is obviously not always the case, when there’s an actual name before the suffix, you can assume that’s what’s happening:
Jans (Eng: Johnson)
Pieterse (Eng: Peterson)
Willemsen (Eng: Williams)
This obviously happens in English a lot, too, with the -s or -son suffixes. In some languages, like Swedish, there’s different versions for daughter of…, but that’s very uncommon in Dutch, although it has been used in the past. Note how this is actually not happening anymore; all these names have been around, more or less unchanged, for centuries, just like in most other countries.
In fact, this practice went on all the way until the early 1800s, until some guy named Napoleon figured he liked our nether lands a lot and took us under his wing. From that moment on, we were forbidden to use patronyms, and we were all expected to come up with a single name that would be our family name forever. This has also lead to some of the stranger Dutch surnames, perhaps even ones that can be considered jokes, such as Naaktgeboren (literally: born naked)
Older names, such as that of the famous admiral Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter, literally have the word zoon (Eng: son) in it – when written down, it was often done so abbreviated to -sz, which eventually turned into just -s. There’s even a version where an -x is used instead, in place of what would otherwise simply be -ks, like Hendrix – Hendrik’s son.
With that worked out, let’s go to the properly strange ones.
De
If you’ve read the article about articles (or if you know some basic Dutch), you already know de means the, and that’s no different in names. You’ll find it often when referring to a profession (Jan de Boer (the farmer)), or a personal feature (Ilse de Lange (the tall)).
This is one of the most common ones, together with…
Van
The one word you’ll probably associate most with Dutch last names, is van. Van literally means of/from, and it’s mainly used to describe a place a person was born in – either the name of an actual town, or a nearby landmark. This leads to names such as Virgil van Dijk, whose forefather was probably born near a dyke, or Vincent van Gogh, which is derived from a town with that name.
This isn’t uncommon in other countries around the world: von in German means the exact same thing, as does du/de la in French, for example.
Van de/den/der
The two can also be combined into van de, meaning of the, also usually referring to a feature of the land or a physical place. In this case, an old habit comes into play, one we thankfully barely ever use anymore: the grammatical case, in which articles (or other word types) change depending on the forms of the other words in the sentence.
This is why you’ll sometimes end up with things like van der or van den. They’re remnants of long-gone grammar rules, and I couldn’t be happier about us having gotten rid of them – although in names, they still look rather cool.
Dutch has two definite articles, the other being het, which is also used in combination with van, or on its own – but less so than de.
Less used ones
There are many of these prefixes, and while van and de are easily the most common ones, you’re bound to come across some of the others, too. Some notable ones, and their meanings:
in ‘t (Eng: in the – ‘t is a shorter spelling of het, our other definite article)
uit/uijt (Eng: from)
ten (Eng: at)
op (Eng: on, also usually used with an article)
bij (Eng: by/near)
Capitals or nah?
Have you ever wondered why you sometimes see these little words like van or de spelled with a capital letter, and sometimes with a lowercase letter? There’s a perfectly simple explanation for it. While we do see these prefixes as actual parts of the name, we don’t use capitals when we write out the full name, i.e. the first and last name combined.
When the first name is dropped, however, this changes. The basic rule in Dutch is that every name, for people, places and all other named things, should start with a capital letter. That’s why you’ll see an uppercase letter when the first name is omitted:
Virgil van Dijk scored the opening goal
Van Dijk scored the opening goal
This happens even in the middle of a sentence:
The opening goal was scored by Virgil van Dijk.
The opening goal was scored by Van Dijk.
Since the Dutch used to have a thing or two to say in what is now the USA, there’s a lot of Dutch names there, too, especially around the New York area. The prefixes in those names are often written with a capital letter, like Dick Van Dyke, but this isn’t how we do things over here.
In Belgium, the prefixes are usually attached to the rest of the name, like in the surname Vandamme (Eng: of the dam). In those cases, they’re obviously written with a capital letter as well.
Long story short
Dutch last names can look a bit weird. While many of them simply depict a profession or a parent’s name, others have funky additions such as van or de, or a combination of those. They all basically talk about where someone’s family is originally from, which isn’t strange at all, but due to the many different combinations and the slightly odd use of capitals, they can take a while to wrap your head around.
At least now you know why they’re spelled like that, and at least we try to keep things somewhat sane – looking at you, Johann Gambolputty!
