Nienke

given name · Latin script

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

Nienke is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. Recorded meaning: a diminutive of the female given name Catharina.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 1.3K(measured from records)
  • BEBelgium≈1 in 54K
  • SESweden1 in 329K

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.

Netherlands (measured from records)

13,712 people

Sources
104 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

a diminutive of the female given name Catharina

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Nienke 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 Nienke is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NL Netherlands#23513,7121 in 1.3K14KNienke104
BE Belgium—≈220 est.≈1 in 54K7Nienke28
ES Spain—≈130 est.≈1 in 393K—Nienke12
DE Germany—≈120 est.≈1 in 698K—Nienke43
ZA South Africa—≈89 est.≈1 in 632K—Nienke7
SE Sweden—311 in 329K31Nienke6
DK Denmark—171 in 345K17Nienke6
IS Iceland—11 in 351K1——

13,712 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)

Nienke is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Nienké

39 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18501900195020002050Nienke van Hichtum, b. 1860Nienke Brinkhuis, b. 1971Nienke Römer, b. 1975Nienke Hommes, b. 1977Nienke Kingma, b. 1982Nienke van Dijk, b. 1991Nienke Brinkman, b. 1993Nienke Veenhoven, b. 2004Nienke Vinke, b. 2004

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 27 sources across 16 countries.

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name 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 Nienke mean, and where does it come from?
a diminutive of the female given name Catharina Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Nienke a male or female name?
Nienke is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What are other forms of the name Nienke?
In the etymology graph, Karen, Kathleen and Catherine are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Nienke have the most bearers?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Nienke, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nienke.
Where is Nienke most common?
Nienke is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.3 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Nienke?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 13,712 people named Nienke, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
How common is Nienke compared with other names?
In the Netherlands, Nienke is the 235th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Nienke?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nienke

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Nienke” — the 235th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Nienke parses inside a full name →