Claassen
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Claassen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Patronymische -s/-en/-sen-Varianten zu Kurzformen von Nikolaus/Claes; 503+54 Belege.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 5K
- DEGermany≈1 in 53K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 222 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
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:
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)
Patronymische -s/-en/-sen-Varianten zu Kurzformen von Nikolaus/Claes; 503+54 Belege. Demonstriert Schreibvarianten mit aa/a, s/ss/ß und -en.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Claassen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #442 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Claassen | 78 |
| NL Netherlands | #527 | 3,423 | 1 in 5K | 3.4K | Claassen | 73 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | Claassen | 95 |
| US United States | — | 1,406 | 1 in 237K | 1.4K | Claassen | 222 |
| AO Angola | — | ≈870 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Claassen | 3 |
| BE Belgium | — | 276 | 1 in 42K | 311 | Claassen | 28 |
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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Statbel — Noms de famille (family names). 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)
- Eugen Claassenb. 1895DEGerman publisher
- Hilde Claassenb. 1897DEGerman publisher (1897-1988)
- Emil Maria Claassenb. 1934DEDr. rer. pol. Universität zu Köln 1963
- Johan Claassenb. 1943NLDutch painter (born 1943)
- Henning J. Claassenb. 1944DEGerman entrepreneur (born 1944)
- Johann Claassenb. 1953DEGerman badminton player
- Harald Claassenb. 1961DEGerman badminton player
- Utz Claassenb. 1963DEGerman professor
- Tom Claassenb. 1964NLDutch sculptor (born 1964)
- Fay Claassenb. 1969NLDutch singer
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 23 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 3.4K | #306 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4K | #19,275 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.4K | #19,744 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.3K | #19,470 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 311 | #5,465 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 276 | #6,034 |
| 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 Claassen mean?
- Recorded meaning: Patronymische -s/-en/-sen-Varianten zu Kurzformen von Nikolaus/Claes; 503+54 Belege.
- In which country does Claassen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Claassen in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled claassen.
- How common is the name Claassen?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 3,423 people named Claassen in 2007, about 1 in 5.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Claassen compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Claassen is the 442nd most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Claassen?
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/claassenThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Claassen” — the 442nd most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.