Names of Netherlands NL

CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) records Jansen as the commonest surname in the Netherlands; the names that most distinguish the Netherlands from the rest of the world are Vries, Henk and Jeroen.

Written in Dutch, Western Frisian.

Population
17M
Official registers
3
Name forms recorded
122K
BBuilt from 3 official registers (2007), 1 sub-national, 121,782 name forms in our corpus.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Netherlands are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Netherlands included.

How names work in Netherlands

2 naming traditions are in use in Netherlands, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Netherlands

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 2
Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) — 26,225 given names counted over residents, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Maria316K—
5Johanna251K87
9Anna130K—
13Cornelia106K—
14Elisabeth105K—
17Wilhelmina93K—
19Catharina81K—
22Hendrika67K—
24Adriana66K—
25Petronella65K—
45Margaretha44K—
46Yvonne42K36
50Jacoba40K—
51Monique39K34
52Helena38K—
57Geertruida37K—
67Esther33K29
75Ingrid31K73
78Anne30K58
81Antonia30K—

Where the two lists disagree

23 of Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)Across all recordsmaria: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. marianot rankedjohanna: 5 → 87 · ranks lower across all records5. johanna87anna: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. annanot rankedcornelia: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. cornelianot rankedelisabeth: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. elisabethnot rankedwilhelmina: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. wilhelminanot rankedcatharina: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. catharinanot rankedhendrika: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. hendrikanot rankedadriana: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. adriananot rankedpetronella: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. petronellanot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) on the left; every record we hold for Netherlands on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Netherlands

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Netherlands holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

HenkJeroenMartijnHansPeterSonJohanPieterDennisMarcelJolandaWimWouterNielsMaartenRobRemcoBartJaapSanneRuudDaanBramMarcoGerritJohannesTheMariekeArjanJokePietMoniqueJanAnnekeKarinAnoukPetraSaskiaJoseMaaikeTrainingKoenCornelisJelleFemkeJacquelineSjoerdGerardEstherMarijkeTheoFrankCeesMirjamReneInekeJoOpDirkIngridMichel
Sized by how much of the difference between Netherlands's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Scripts & spelling

Nederlandsurname(measured from records)
Vansurname(measured from records)
Jangiven name(measured from records)
Petergiven name(measured from records)
Stevengiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Netherlands, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

Sub-national registers

1 register for Netherlands publishes regional lists only (SVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered)). A regional list is not a national one, and summing regions would be an aggregate the publisher never made, so no figure on this page comes from them.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Netherlands?
Maria, according to Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017), with 316,197 bearers recorded among girls.
What is the most common surname in Netherlands?
Jansen, according to CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) (2007), with 73,533 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Netherlands?
Because they count different people. Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Maria. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Jan. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Netherlands?
No — 2 are described on this page (Dutch, Frisian), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Netherlands”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/NL (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007).