Boven
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: above
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Boven is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 18K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 679K
- BEBelgium1 in 36K
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
- 151 (measured from records)
- 1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
963 people, 2007
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)
Toponymic surname from a place/dwelling feature; variant cluster includes Boven[kerk], Baben, Baven[diek].
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Boven is read(measured from records)
Boven 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.
- English55%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Boven in English.
- Dutch24%
above
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Dutch
- German5.0%
Toponymic surname from a place/dwelling feature; variant cluster includes Boven[kerk], Baben, Baven[diek].
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Toponymischer Familienname zu einem Orts-/Lagebezug 'oben'; Bearer count 430.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Toponymic surname from mnd. boven/baven 'oben, über'; 430 tokens.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Boven 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 | #616 | 963 | 1 in 18K | 963 | Boven | 79 |
| US United States | — | 490 | 1 in 679K | 598 | Boven | 151 |
| BE Belgium | — | 322 | 1 in 36K | 322 | Boven | 54 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 237K | — | Boven | 12 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 394K | — | Boven | 57 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 48 | 1 in 175K | 48 | Boven | 11 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈41 est. | ≈1 in 153K | — | Boven | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 215K | — | Boven | 14 |
963 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Boven 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 Danish, definite singular of bov
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nds (Germany), plural of Boov
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)
- Pierre Bovenb. 1886CHSwiss botanist, herbalist and jurist (1886-1968)
- Hendrik Derk Wouter Bovenb. 1917NLDutch politician
- Don Bovenb. 1925USAmerican baseball player (1925-2011)
- Erica van Bovenb. 1952NLDutch scholar of Literature (born 1952)
- Raymond Bovenb. 1953BEMotocross rider from Belgium
- Karin Bovenb. 1963NLDutch anthropologist and diplomat
- Lars Bovenb. 2001NLDutch road cyclist
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 17 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 963 | #1,795 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 598 | #39,643 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 492 | #41,657 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 490 | #43,969 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 322 | #5,087 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 313 | #5,413 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 48 | #19,268 |
| 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
- Where does the name Boven come from?
- Toponymic surname from a place/dwelling feature; variant cluster includes Boven[kerk], Baben, Baven[diek]. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- What does the name Boven mean?
- In Dutch, above
- In which country does Boven have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 963 people named Boven, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boven.
- Where is Boven most common?
- Boven is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 18 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Boven?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 963 people named Boven in 2007, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
- How common is Boven compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Boven is the 616th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Boven?
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/bovenThe 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, “Boven” — the 616th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.