Koetje
surname · Latin script
Meaning: apparently a nickname meaning ‘little cow’ or ‘coot’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkoʊdʒə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Koetje is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 615K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 37K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 341K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 130 (measured from records)
- 1 in 37K (inferred from the name graph)
541 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
apparently a nickname meaning ‘little cow’ or ‘coot’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Koetje 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 541 | 1 in 615K | 563 | Koetje | 130 |
| NL Netherlands | 464 | 1 in 37K | 464 | Koetje | 30 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 341K | — | Koetje | 4 |
| ES Spain | ≈78 est. | ≈1 in 645K | — | Koetje | 1 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈68 est. | ≈1 in 3.2M | — | Koetje | 1 |
| SG Singapore | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 485K | — | Koetje | 1 |
| LS Lesotho | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 572K | 2 | — | 3 |
541 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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); Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists. 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)
Koetje 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 Dutch, diminutive of koe
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)
- Helmer Koetjeb. 1953NLDutch politician (1953-2010)
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 10 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 563 | #41,648 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 541 | #40,432 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 464 | #4,212 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 452 | #44,738 |
| LS Lesotho | Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists | 2022 | 2 | #12 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- What does the name Koetje mean, and where does it come from?
- apparently a nickname meaning ‘little cow’ or ‘coot’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Koetje?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkoʊdʒə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Koetje have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 541 people named Koetje, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled koetje.
- Where is Koetje most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Koetje is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 37 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Koetje?
- In the United States, the national register counted 541 people named Koetje in 2010, about 1 in 615 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Koetje?
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/koetjeThe 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, “Koetje”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.