Molenaar
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Molenaar is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. Recorded meaning: miller.
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.7K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 65K
- BEBelgium1 in 206K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 9 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
9,914 people, 2007
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
miller
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Molenaar 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 | 9,914 | 1 in 1.7K | 9.9K | Molenaar | 4 |
| US United States | 564 | 1 in 590K | 564 | Molenaar | 2 |
| NO Norway | 84 | 1 in 65K | 84 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 57 | 1 in 206K | 57 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 43 | 1 in 1.2M | 43 | — | 1 |
| SE Sweden | 30 | 1 in 340K | 30 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 10 | 1 in 587K | 10 | — | — |
9,914 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Molenaar 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, occupational name from molenaar ‘miller’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Nicolaas Molenaarb. 1850NLDutch architect (1850–1930)
- Anthonie Nicolaas Molenaarb. 1888NLDutch jurist and politician (1888-1958)
- Klaas Molenaarb. 1921NLDutch association football player (1921-1996)
- Frans Molenaarb. 1940NLDutch fashion designer (1940-2015)
- Keje Molenaarb. 1958NLDutch footballer
- Robert Molenaarb. 1969NLDutch footballer and manager
- Marjolijn Molenaarb. 1983NLDutch cricketer
- Beau Molenaarb. 1985NLDutch footballer
- Olav Molenaarb. 1999NLDutch rower
- Alex Molenaarb. 1999NLDutch cyclist
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 21 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 9.9K | #55 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 564 | #41,581 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 564 | #39,052 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 559 | #37,480 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 84 | #17,987 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 57 | #23,832 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 43 | #49,951 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 43 | #49,226 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 30 | #18,945 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 10 | #41,661 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Molenaar mean, and where does it come from?
- miller Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Molenaar?
- In the etymology graph, Molen is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Molenaar have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 9.9 thousand people named Molenaar, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled molenaar.
- Where is Molenaar most common?
- Molenaar is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.7 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Molenaar?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 9,914 people named Molenaar in 2007, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Molenaar?
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/molenaarThe 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, “Molenaar”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.