Keulen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: Cologne (the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/køːlən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Keulen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 14K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 89Kas Cologne
- USUnited States1 in 1.8Mas Cologne
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 Keulen 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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Sources
- 126 (measured from records)
- 1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
1,226 people, 2007
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Cologne in US United States, AT Austria and Köln in DE Germany.
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; likely from a place name, with some overlap to Köln noted. Bearers: (van) Keulen 107+10.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Keulen is read(measured from records)
Keulen 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.
- Dutch50%
Cologne (the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English26%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Keulen in English.
- German9.3%
Toponymic surname; likely from a place name, with some overlap to Köln noted. Bearers: (van) Keulen 107+10.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Toponymischer Wohnstättenname, wohl zu kūle 'Bodenvertiefung' bzw. zur Keul-Gruppe; 117 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)
Keulen 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 | #285 | 1,226 | 1 in 14K | 1.2K | Keulen | 98 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 89K | — | Köln | 48 |
| US United States | — | 181as Cologne | 1 in 1.8M | 186 | Cologne | 126 |
| BE Belgium | — | 172as Cologne | 1 in 68K | 172 | Keulen | 15 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 2M | — | Keulen | 6 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 313K | — | Keulen | 46 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈38 est. | ≈1 in 231K | — | Cologne | 4 |
1,226 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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ada van Keulenb. 1920BEBelgian resistance fighter
- Carolien Keulenb. 1957NLDutch volleyball player
- Caroline Keulen-Tillieb. 1957NLDutch volleyball player
- Chris Keulenb. 1959NLDutch photographer
- Marino Keulenb. 1963BEFlemish politician
- Boukje Keulenb. 1963NLDutch speed skater
- Wytse Hette Keulenb. 1968NLDutch classical philologist (1968-)
- Maartje Keulenb. 1992NLDutch association football player
- Youri Keulenb. 1998Dutch triathlete
- Mitchel Keulenb. 1998NLDutch association football player
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 14 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 1.2K | #1,322 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 138 | #11,834 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Keulen come from?
- Toponymic surname; likely from a place name, with some overlap to Köln noted. Bearers: (van) Keulen 107+10. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- How do you pronounce Keulen?
- A machine transcription gives /køːlən/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- What does the name Keulen mean?
- In Dutch, Cologne (the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany)
- In which country does Keulen have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Keulen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled keulen.
- Where is Keulen most common?
- Keulen is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 14 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Keulen?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,226 people named Keulen in 2007, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Keulen compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Keulen is the 285th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Keulen?
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/keulenThe 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, “Keulen” — the 285th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.