Zylstra
surname · Latin script
Meaning: locative Frisian surname, from Sil 'sluice'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈzɪɫstɹə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zylstra is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 181K(measured from records)
- CACanada≈1 in 105K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 131K
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
- 246 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 105K (inferred from the name graph)
1,842 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
locative Frisian surname, from Sil 'sluice'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zylstra 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 | 1,842 | 1 in 181K | 1.8K | Zylstra | 246 |
| CA Canada | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 105K | — | Zylstra | 65 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 269K | — | Zylstra | 10 |
| AU Australia | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 131K | — | Zylstra | 58 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 539K | 17 | Zylstra | 19 |
| SG Singapore | ≈36 est. | ≈1 in 174K | — | Zylstra | 1 |
1,842 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Zylstra 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 English, A surname from West Frisian.
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)
- Anthony Adama Zijlstrab. 1902NLnot in their usual name(1902-1982)
- Bernard Zylstrab. 1934CAAmerican political scientist
- Lynne Zylstrab. 1945New Zealand artist
- Brandon Zylstrab. 1993USAmerican gridiron football player (born 1993)
- Shane Zylstrab. 1996USAmerican football tight end
- Gerben Zylstrab. 2000USAmerican biochemist
- Sarah EekhoffUSnot in their usual nameAmerican journalist
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 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.8K | #15,806 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.8K | #15,388 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.7K | #16,016 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 17 | #100,824 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (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
- What does the name Zylstra mean, and where does it come from?
- locative Frisian surname, from Sil 'sluice' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Zylstra?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈzɪɫstɹə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Zylstra have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.8 thousand people named Zylstra, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zylstra.
- How common is the name Zylstra?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,842 people named Zylstra in 2010, about 1 in 181 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Zylstra?
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/zylstraThe 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, “Zylstra”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.