Dutch boy names
The defining fact about modern Dutch naming is that the short form won. For centuries a Dutch boy was registered as Daniël and called Daan; somewhere around the 1980s parents stopped maintaining the fiction and simply wrote Daan on the certificate. Sem, Thijs, Gijs, Teun, Bas, Cas and Koen are not nicknames waiting for a formal version to be produced at a wedding. They are the legal names.
The short forms that won
Each of these was once a roepnaam, the call name a child answered to at home while something longer sat on the paperwork. None of them is in the current U.S. top 100; several have spent two decades near the top of the Dutch birth register.
- DaanDAHNDutch
God is my judge. Daniël with the ending stripped and the vowel stretched — the doubled aa is long and open, nearer father than the a of English Dan.
- SemSEMDutch
Name, and by extension renown. The outlier here: it is not a clipping of anything, but Shem, eldest son of Noah, in the Latin Vulgate's spelling.
- TeunTUHNDutch
From the Roman family name Antonius, whose sense nobody has ever recovered. Dutch cut the head off the name and kept the middle.
- BasBAHSSDutch
From Sebaste, the venerable city. Sebastiaan with everything after the first syllable removed.
- CasKAHSSDutch
Traditionally, treasurer. Short for Casper, one of the three kings who still come down Dutch streets once a year behind a paper star.
- KoenKOONDutch
Bold, from bold counsel — and one of the rare names that means, to a speaker of its own language, exactly what it says. Koen is the Dutch word for bold.
- MeesMAYSSDutch
Son of Talmai. Two things at once in Dutch: the tail end of Bartholomeus, and the ordinary word for a titmouse.
- KeesKAYSSDutch
From the Roman family name Cornelius, cut out of the middle rather than off either end. The Keeshond dog is named after an eighteenth-century Kees and his politics.
- NiekNEEKDutch
Victory of the people. Nicolaas down to one syllable — the saint who became Sinterklaas and, by way of Dutch settlers in New York, Santa Claus.
- RensRENSSDutch
From Laurentum, the town of the laurels. Laurens with the front removed: Dutch keeps the stressed end, which is the less obvious half to save.
- BramBRAMDutch
Father of a multitude, by way of Abraham — carved out of the back of the name, not the front, which is where English gets Abe.
- JaapYAHPDutch
The one who grasps the heel, from Jacob. In Dutch the J is always a Y, so the name begins the way yard does.
Traditional Dutch names
The full forms that the short ones came out of, plus the names of the counts, the painters and the guildhalls. These have been ordinary in the Low Countries for four hundred years and more.
- WillemVIL-emDutch
Resolute protector — wil, determination, plus helm, protection. The Dutch royal name, and the same compound behind William and Guillaume.
- HendrikHEN-drikDutch
Ruler of the home or estate. The meaning is smaller and better than king: the man in charge of one household.
- PieterPEE-terDutch
Rock. Every language reshaped the apostle's name; the Dutch version has Pieter Bruegel, the greatest painter of peasant life, standing behind it.
- MaartenMAHR-tuhnDutch
Of Mars, the Roman god of war — and celebrated with paper lanterns. On 11 November Sint-Maarten sends Dutch children singing along the streets.
- DirkDIRKDutch
Ruler of the people. Theodoric with most of the syllables worn away; it belonged to the counts who built Holland, and it is also an English word for a dagger.
- Bastiaanbahs-tee-AHNDutch
From Sebaste. Unlike most Dutch clippings this one kept its length — three syllables, the stress at the back, no apology.
- JorisYOH-rissDutch
Earth-worker, farmer. The Dutch George, and it kept the dragon: Sint-Joris is the saint on the crossbowmen's guildhalls of every old town in the Low Countries.
- FlorisFLOH-rissDutch
Flowering, in bloom. For four centuries the counts of Holland used only two names, and this was one of them. The other was Dirk.
- RubenRUE-buhnDutch
See, a son. The Dutch spelling of Reuben, eldest of Jacob's twelve — a name the Hebrew Bible explains twice, and differently each time.
- SanderSAHN-derDutch
Defender of men. English takes the front of Alexander and gets Alex; Dutch takes the tail and gets Sander; the middle produces Xander.
The ones English mouths get wrong
Dutch spelling is regular and Dutch sounds are not English sounds, which is a difficult combination. Every name here is easy once, and impossible until then.
- GijsKHICEDutch
Bright pledge, from Gijsbert. The g is a fricative, not a stop — the ch of loch — and no amount of goodwill will turn it into an English g.
- ThijsTICEDutch
Gift of God, from Matthijs. The th is a plain t, because Dutch has no th sound at all, and the ij is one letter making the vowel of ice.
- StijnSTINEDutch
Steadfast, standing firm — Constantijn with the first three syllables gone. At least as much a Flemish name as a Dutch one.
- SjoerdSHOORTFrisian
The one who guards the victory. Spelled to look harder than it is: sj is sh, oe is oo, and the final d hardens to a t.
- GuusKHOOSDutch
Venerable, or the Gothic staff, depending which long form you pick — and most Dutch families no longer bother with either.
- JoostYOHSTDutch
Just and fair, or from an old Breton word for lord. Latin Justus and the saint Judocus had already merged before Dutch got hold of them.
- JelleYEL-uhFrisian
A Frisian short form of a lost Germanic compound. Frisian is not a dialect of Dutch: it is a separate language, and the closest living relative of English.
- WouterWOW-terDutch
Ruler of the army — the Dutch Walter. It opens on the vowel English speakers most often miss: ou in Dutch is the ow of mouth.
How Dutch naming works
The old system had two names for one child. The registered name honoured a grandparent and went into the books in its most formal shape — Daniël, Cornelis, Bartholomeus, Antonius — and the roepnaam, the call name, was what the household actually said. Because Dutch families named children after grandparents in a fixed order, the formal names recurred relentlessly down the generations while the call names did the work of telling people apart. When parents began registering the call name instead, the whole top of the Dutch charts changed shape inside a decade. The figures that record this come from the Nederlandse Voornamenbank, kept by the Meertens Instituut and fed from the municipal population register, so what is being counted is strictly the name on the certificate — which is exactly why the change is visible at all.
Two more things are worth knowing before you use one of these names in English. The first is the digraph ij, which Dutch treats as a single letter: it had its own typewriter key, it fills one square in a Dutch crossword, and both halves capitalise together, so the lake is the IJsselmeer and a man named IJsbrand writes it that way on his passport. Alongside it sit ui, a diphthong with no English counterpart at all, and the scraped g of Gijs and Guus. The second is the tussenvoegsel, the little words that sit between a given name and a surname — van, de, van der, van den. In the Netherlands they are written lower case after a first name and capitalised when the surname stands alone, so it is Vincent van Gogh but meneer Van Gogh, and Dutch directories alphabetise him under G. Belgium does it the other way and keeps the capital throughout, which is one of the quieter ways a Flemish name announces itself.