Ruud
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ryt/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ruud is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Shortened from Rudolf ( = English Rudolph).
- NLNetherlands1 in 2.9K(measured from records)
- BEBelgium≈1 in 26K
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 93K
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)
- Sources
- 159 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
6,025 people
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Shortened from Rudolf ( = English Rudolph).
Sources 1
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ruud 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | #101 | 6,025 | 1 in 2.9K | 6K | Ruud | 159 |
| CN China | — | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 1.9M | — | Ruud | 3 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 2 | Ruud | 51 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 180K | — | Ruud | 59 |
| US United States | — | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 2.2M | 1.5K | Ruud | 92 |
| CH Switzerland | — | ≈90 est. | ≈1 in 93K | — | Ruud | 14 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈64 est. | ≈1 in 138K | — | Ruud | 12 |
| NO Norway | — | ≈56 est. | ≈1 in 97K | 8.9K | Ruud | 22 |
6,025 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)
Ruud is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Norwegian, a surname of Norwegian origin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Dutch: short form of RUDOLF .
as a word
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)
- Ruud Geelsb. 1948NLDutch footballer (1948–2023)
- Ruud Krolb. 1949NLDutch football player
- Ruud Gullitb. 1962NLDutch association football player and manager
- Ruud Broodb. 1962NLDutch footballer and manager
- Ruud Hespb. 1965NLDutch footballer
- Ruud Schuurmanb. 1967NLDutch film director
- Ruud van Nistelrooyb. 1976NLDutch association football player and coach
- Ruud Nijmanb. 1982NLDutch cricketer
- Ruud Boffinb. 1987BEBelgian association football player
- Ruud Vormerb. 1988NLDutch footballer
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 29 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 6K | #335 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 5.1K | #707 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 73 | #6,718 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 10 | #24,381 |
Reference works 4
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Ruud mean, and where does it come from?
- Shortened from Rudolf ( = English Rudolph). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Ruud have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 6.0 thousand people named Ruud, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ruud.
- Where is Ruud most common?
- Ruud is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.9 thousand people carrying it.
- How do you pronounce Ruud?
- A machine transcription gives /ryt/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- Is Ruud a male or female name?
- Ruud 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.
- What are other forms of the name Ruud?
- In the etymology graph, Rudy, Rudolph and Rolf are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Rudolf and Roelof.
- How common is the name Ruud?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 6,025 people named Ruud, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Ruud compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Ruud is the 101st most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ruud?
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/ruudThe 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, “Ruud” — the 101st most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.