Rutgers

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Son of Rutger, a Germanic form of Roger

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

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

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 7.1K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 1.1M
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 192K

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)

2,447 people, 2007

Sources
134 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 7.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

Son of Rutger, a Germanic form of Roger.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Rutgers 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 Rutgers is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NL Netherlands#5992,4471 in 7.1K2.4KRutgers80
US United States—3001 in 1.1M328Rutgers134
ZA South Africa—≈290 est.≈1 in 192K—Rutgers17
CA Canada—≈110 est.≈1 in 352K—Rutgers28
AU Australia—≈71 est.≈1 in 361K—Rutgers46
NZ New Zealand—≈16 est.≈1 in 317K—Rutgers16

2,447 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)

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

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Rütgers

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Netherlands

    Also written Rütgers

37 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)

Rutgers is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, An American surname from Dutch.

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

  • In English, University, NJ

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)

150016001700180019002000Jan Rutgersius, b. 1589Henry Rutgers, b. 1745Antonie Rutgers, b. 1805Maria Rutgers-Hoitsema, b. 1847Jan Rutgers, b. 1850Sebald Rutgers, b. 1879Bram Rutgers, b. 1884Arend Joan Rutgers, b. 1903Gerrit Rutgers, b. 1914Wim Rutgers, b. 1941

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 Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 16 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Rutgers
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20072.4K#469
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020328#65,358
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010300#65,964
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000280#66,073
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • 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 Rutgers mean, and where does it come from?
Son of Rutger, a Germanic form of Roger. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Rutgers?
A machine transcription gives /ɹɐtɡəz/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Rutgers have the most bearers?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 2.4 thousand people named Rutgers, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rutgers.
Where is Rutgers most common?
Rutgers is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 7.1 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Rutgers?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 2,447 people named Rutgers in 2007, about 1 in 7.1 thousand residents.
How common is Rutgers compared with other names?
In the Netherlands, Rutgers is the 599th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Rutgers?

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

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, “Rutgers” — the 599th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Rutgers parses inside a full name →