Koen
given name · Latin script
Meaning: nickname from Middle Dutch coen(e) ‘bold’, ‘daring’ or personal name Cono with the same meanKoepp ing
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kun/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Koen is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- BEBelgium≈1 in 782(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 952
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 2.9Kas Keng
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Koen itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 257 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 782 (inferred from the name graph)
69,582 named Ken, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Belgium, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Keng in US United States, MY Malaysia, CN China.
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)
nickname from Middle Dutch coen(e) ‘bold’, ‘daring’ or personal name Cono with the same meanKoepp ing.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Koen 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 69,582as Ken | 1 in 4.8K | 69K | KenG | 257 |
| NL Netherlands | #104 | 18,159 | 1 in 952 | 18K | Koen | 160 |
| BE Belgium | #109 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 782 | 74 | Koen | 147 |
| MY Malaysia | #481 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | KenG | 71 |
| CN China | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 135K | — | KenG | 35 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,527as Ken | 1 in 3.6K | 3.7K | Koen | 11 |
| GY Guyana | — | 248as Ken | 1 in 3K | 248 | — | 3 |
69,582 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling ken. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Koen is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Dutch, courageous
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
the priest; Belgrado, Novi Sad, Buenos Aires
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Dutch, one of the many forms of Cohen.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Finnish, first-person singular present indicative of kokea
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Indonesian, Second-person singular pronoun: you, your, yours
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)
- Koen Geensb. 1958BEBelgian politician
- Koen De Bouwb. 1964BEBelgian actor
- Koen De Graeveb. 1972BEBelgian actor
- Koen de Kortb. 1982NLDutch cyclist
- Koen van der Biezenb. 1985NLDutch footballer
- Koen Naertb. 1989BEBelgian athletics competitor
- Koen Verweijb. 1990NLDutch speed skater
- Koen Casteelsb. 1992BEBelgian association football player (born 1992)
- Zeno Debastb. 2003BEnot in their usual nameBelgian association football player (born 2003)
- Koen GroeneveldNLDutch DJ and record producer
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 52 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 18K | #132 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 17K | #220 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.1K | #5,478 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 448 | — |
| NL Netherlands | SVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered) | 2017 | 141 | #113 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 84 | #8,659 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 40 | #5,478 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 30 | #11,511 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 7 | #35,090 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Babynamen — Lijst met meer dan 22.000 namen (Amelia King, 2020) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- What does the name Koen mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname from Middle Dutch coen(e) ‘bold’, ‘daring’ or personal name Cono with the same meanKoepp ing. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Koen?
- A machine transcription gives /kun/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- In which country does Koen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 70 thousand people named Ken, more than in any other country we hold.
- Is Koen a male or female name?
- Koen is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How common is the name Koen?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 18,159 people named Koen, about 1 in 952 residents.
- How common is Koen compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Koen is the 104th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Koen?
- In the etymology graph, Connie, Kurt and Curt are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Koenraad.
What do you want to know about Koen?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/koenThe 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, “Koen” — the 104th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.