Boer
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A Dutch colonist in South Africa during the colonial era, especially a farmer
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 22 countries · latest register: CBG Familienamenbank, 2007
/buːr/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Boer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country, where it is the 9th most common surname.
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.5K(measured from records)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 15K
- DEGermany≈1 in 26K
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 Boer 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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 283 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
11,448 people, 2007
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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)A Dutch colonist in South Africa during the colonial era, especially a farmer.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Boer is read
(measured from records)Boer 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.
- Dutch45%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Boer in Dutch.
- English27%
A Dutch colonist in South Africa during the colonial era, especially a farmer.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
War, 5. Africa
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German6.9%
Artikelose Form zu 'Bauer'; 374 Träger. Zeigt die kürzere, ohne Artikel gebrauchte niederdeutsche Variante.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
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)Boer 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 | #9 | 11,448 | 1 in 1.5K | 11K | Boer | 189 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Boer | 38 |
| IN India | — | 3,188as Bor | 1 in 416K | 3.2K | Boer | 19 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Boer | 112 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,389 | 1 in 89K | 2.4K | — | 4 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 33K | 1 | Boer | 118 |
| HU Hungary | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Boer | 36 |
11,448 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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)Boer 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.
In Italian, forma dialetal setentrional reduzida de Boero
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Afrikaans, A Boer; an Afrikaner, especially an inhabitant or descendant of the white inhabitants of the Boer republics.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, first-person singular present passive subjunctive of boō
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)- Cornelis de Boerb. 1880NLDutch romanist and linguist (1880-1957)
- Jan Hendrik de Boerb. 1899NLDutch scientist (1899-1971)
- Wim den Boerb. 1914NLDutch historian (1914-1993)
- Albert Boerb. 1935NLDutch writer
- Anna Enquistb. 1945NLnot in their usual nameDutch writer (born 1945)
- Dick de Boerb. 1947NLDutch historian
- Jonnie Boerb. 1965NLDutch chef
- Diederik Boerb. 1980NLDutch footballer (born 1980)
- Margot Boerb. 1985NLDutch speed skater
- Teun Boerb. 2001NLDutch short track speed skater
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)Evidence
(measured from records)35 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 11K | #42 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.4K | #4,161 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 163 | #265 |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Boer mean, and where does it come from?
- A Dutch colonist in South Africa during the colonial era, especially a farmer. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Boer?
- A machine transcription gives /buːr/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- In which country does Boer have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Boer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boer.
- Where is Boer most common?
- Boer is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.5 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Boer?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 11,448 people named Boer in 2007, about 1 in 1.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Boer compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Boer is the 9th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Boer?
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/boerThe 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, “Boer” — the 9th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.