Bouwer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: builder
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/baʊwɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bouwer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 5.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 15Kas Beaver
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17Kas Beaver
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 Bouwer 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 407 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈74,000 named Beaver, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Beavers in GB United Kingdom, SG Singapore, EG Egypt and 1 more and Beaver in US United States, KY Cayman Islands.
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)
builder
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bouwer 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈74,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Beavers | 8 |
| US United States | — | 21,640as Beaver | 1 in 15K | 22K | Beaver | 407 |
| ZA South Africa | #640 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | — | Bouwer | 79 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Beavers | 143 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Beavers | 6 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 1,100 | 1 in 16K | 1.1K | Bouwer | 39 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Beavers | 7 |
| KY Cayman Islands | — | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Beaver | 4 |
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 2000; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Alba Bouwerb. 1920ZASouth African writer (1920-2010)
- Colin Bouwerb. 1950ZASouth African murderer
- Ton Bouwerb. 1958NLDutch photographer
- Eric Bouwerb. 1984DEGerman film actor
- Jaco Bouwerb. 1985ZASouth African rugby union footballer
- Arthur Bouwerb. 1989ZASouth African-Namibian rugby union footballer
- Merle Bouwerb. 1997DEGerman volleyball player
- Jonathan Bouwerb. 2002ZASouth African sport cyclist
- Bjarne Bouwerb. 2003NLDutch sailor
- Edward BouwerUSenvironmental engineer
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)
Attested in 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 1.1K | #1,522 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 205 | #95,461 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 188 | #96,799 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 161 | #103,193 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Bouwer mean, and where does it come from?
- builder Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Bouwer?
- A machine transcription gives /baʊwɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Bouwer have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 74 thousand people named Beaver in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Bouwer?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,100 people named Bouwer in 2007, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
- How common is Bouwer compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Bouwer is the 640th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bouwer?
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/bouwerThe 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, “Bouwer” — the 640th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.