Hulst

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Dutch: holly, common holly (Ilex aquifolium)

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ˈhəɫst/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Hulst is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 9.4K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 553K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 172K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Netherlands (measured from records)

1,839 people, 2007

Sources
171 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 9.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

North German (Hulst) and Dutch (van der Hulst); topographic name for someone living where holly grew, from hulst ‘holly’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Hulst is read(measured from records)

Hulst is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English56%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Hulst in English.

  • Dutch27%

    holly, common holly (Ilex aquifolium)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Western Frisian10.0%

    holly (Ilex aquifolium)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Hulst counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Hulst is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NL Netherlands#1851,8391 in 9.4K1.8KHulst112
US United States—6021 in 553K905Hulst171
ZA South Africa—≈180 est.≈1 in 306K—Hulst8
GH Ghana—≈140 est.≈1 in 208K—Hulst3
CA Canada—≈130 est.≈1 in 289K—Hulst31
AU Australia—≈110 est.≈1 in 228K—Hulst46
NZ New Zealand—≈29 est.≈1 in 172K—Hulst18

1,839 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Hulst is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Hülst

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Netherlands, Brazil, Guatemala

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Hülst

36 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Hulst is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • North German (Hulst) and Dutch (van der Hulst); topographic name for someone living where holly grew, from hulst ‘holly’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • habitational name from Hulst in Zeeland, or from any of various other places so called, in Alsemberg (Brabant), Kortemark and Zonnebeke (West Flanders), and Scheldewindeke (East Flanders).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In German, alternative form of Hülse (“holly”)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000George Duryea Hulst, b. 1846Maarten Hulst, b. 1895Alexander Reinard Hulst, b. 1910Wim Hulst, b. 1916Hendrik Christoffel van de Hulst, b. 1918Kees Hulst, b. 1952Ron Hulst, b. 1959Kent Hulst, b. 1968Auke Hulst, b. 1975Santy Hulst, b. 1987

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Hulst,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 15 sources across 8 countries.

Official registers attesting Hulst
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20071.8K#716
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020905#28,086
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000802#28,118
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010602#37,076
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Hulst come from?
North German (Hulst) and Dutch (van der Hulst); topographic name for someone living where holly grew, from hulst ‘holly’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Hulst?
A machine transcription gives /ˈhəɫst/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Hulst mean?
In Dutch, holly, common holly (Ilex aquifolium)
In which country does Hulst have the most bearers?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 1.8 thousand people named Hulst, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hulst.
Where is Hulst most common?
Hulst is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 9.4 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Hulst?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,839 people named Hulst in 2007, about 1 in 9.4 thousand residents.
How common is Hulst compared with other names?
In the Netherlands, Hulst is the 185th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Hulst?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/hulst

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Hulst” — the 185th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Hulst parses inside a full name →