Hove

loc · Latin script

Meaning: topographic name from the plural of hof ‘manor farm’, ‘court’, ‘garden’, or a habitational name from places named with this word, for example in the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Hainault

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Hove is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Zimbabwe than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 163K(measured from records)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 13Kas Hoeve
  • ZWZimbabwe≈1 in 2.3K

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 Hove 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.

Zimbabwe (inferred from the name graph)

≈6,200 people, est.

Sources
239 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Zimbabwe, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Hoeve in US United States, NL Netherlands and Høve in NO Norway, DK Denmark.

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)

topographic name from the plural of hof ‘manor farm’, ‘court’, ‘garden’, or a habitational name from places named with this word, for example in the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Hainault.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Hove 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.

Where Hove is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZW Zimbabwe—≈6,200 est.≈1 in 2.3Klisted—24
US United States—2,0411 in 163K2KHoeve239
NO Norway—1,9461 in 2.8K1.9KHøve30
NL Netherlands#8681,311as Hoeve1 in 13K1.3KHoeve76
DK Denmark—7871 in 7.5K787Høve10
NZ New Zealand—≈46 est.≈1 in 107K—Hove15

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); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Hove is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United Kingdom

    Also written Hové

  • Portuguese name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United Kingdom, Portugal, Brazil, Colombia

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Hové

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Höve

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Poland

    Also written Hòve, Hộvệ

49 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Hove is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • habitation^ name from any of numerous farmsteads named Hove, from the dative singular of Old Norse hof ‘pagan temple’, ‘place of worship’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, To remain suspended in air, water etc.; to float, to hover.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, Herkunfts-/Wohnstättenname; im Raum Münster, sonst verstreut. Belegt die Variante mit -v- statt -f-.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

  • In ofs, dative singular of hof

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In dum, inflection of hof:

    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)

1850190019502000Anders Hove, b. 1885Ove Hove, b. 1914Leiv M. Hove, b. 1948Harald Hove, b. 1949Anne-Birthe Hove, b. 1951Anders Hove, b. 1956Chenjerai Hove, b. 1956Guy Hove, b. 1957Runar Hove, b. 1995Johan Hove, b. 2000

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 12 countries.

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)

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 Hove mean, and where does it come from?
topographic name from the plural of hof ‘manor farm’, ‘court’, ‘garden’, or a habitational name from places named with this word, for example in the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Hainault. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Hove have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 6.2 thousand people named Hove in Zimbabwe, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Hove?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,041 people named Hove in 2010, about 1 in 163 thousand residents.
How common is Hove compared with other names?
In the Netherlands, Hove is the 868th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Hove?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/hove

The 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, “Hove” — the 868th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Hove parses inside a full name →