Kempen

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Dutch: the Campine

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈkɛmpən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Kempen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 14K(measured from records)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 57K
  • USUnited States1 in 455K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,900 people, est.

Sources
184 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

topographic names from any of various places called Kempen, in the Rhineland, in the Ruhrgebiet, and Schleswig-Holstein, or from Kempno in Poland (Polish K^pno).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

How Kempen is read(measured from records)

Kempen is one spelling over 4 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.

  • English48%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Kempen in English.

  • Dutch24%

    the Campine

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

  • German14%

    topographic names from any of various places called Kempen, in the Rhineland, in the Ruhrgebiet, and Schleswig-Holstein, or from Kempno in Poland (Polish K^pno).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    regional name for someone from Kempen, a region in Brabant.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    Kempen (a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany)

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

    Toponymischer Herkunftsname zu den Siedlungsnamen Kempen in Nordrhein-Westfalen und Niedersachsen; 399 Träger.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

  • French5.6%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Kempen in French.

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)

Kempen 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 Kempen is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈1,900 est.≈1 in 726K—Kempen2
DE Germany—≈1,400 est.≈1 in 57K—Kempen84
NL Netherlands#2551,2241 in 14K1.2KKempen89
ZA South Africa—≈880 est.≈1 in 64K—Kempen24
US United States—7311 in 455K733Kempen184
BE Belgium—3381 in 35K338Kempen36
AU Australia—≈180 est.≈1 in 145K—Kempen64

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). 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)

Kempen is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Danish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Netherlands, Denmark, United States

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Kempén

  • Russian given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Netherlands, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Кемпен

28 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)

Kempen is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Malay, campaign (series of operations undertaken to achieve a set goal)

    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)

12001400160018002000Thomas a Kempis, b. 1380Johann Franz Kempen von Fichtenstamm, b. 1793Harry Kempen, b. 1937Gertrudis Kempen, b. 1957Ronald van Kempen, b. 1958Bernhard Kempen, b. 1960Bernhard Kempen, b. 1961Aiko Kempen, b. 1984Probe, b. 1996Magali Kempen, b. 1997

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)

FormalDear Kempen,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 20 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Kempen
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20071.2K#1,324
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020733#33,463
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010731#31,629
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000595#35,721
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008338#4,804
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—325#5,164
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Kempen come from?
topographic names from any of various places called Kempen, in the Rhineland, in the Ruhrgebiet, and Schleswig-Holstein, or from Kempno in Poland (Polish K^pno). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Kempen?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkɛmpən/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Kempen mean?
In Dutch, the Campine
In which country does Kempen have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 thousand people named Kempen in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kempen.
Where is Kempen most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kempen is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 14 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Kempen?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,224 people named Kempen in 2007, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
How common is Kempen compared with other names?
In the Netherlands, Kempen is the 255th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kempen?

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

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, “Kempen” — the 255th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kempen parses inside a full name →