van (Dutch)

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van is a preposition in the Dutch and Afrikaans languages, meaning "of" or "from" depending on the context (similar to de and di in the Romance languages).

van is a very common prefix in Dutch language surnames, where it is known as a tussenvoegsel. In those cases it nearly always refers to a certain, often quite distant, ancestor's place of origin; examples of this in English can be found in the names Greta Van Susteren "from Susteren" and Rembrandt van Rijn "from the Rhine".[note 1]

In surnames, it can appear by itself or in combination with an article (compare French de la, de l'). The most common cases of this are van de, van der and van den, where the articles are all current or archaic forms of the article de "the". Less common are van het and van 't, which use the similar but neutral article het. Common is also the contraction ver- of van der, which can be written as a single word with the rest of the surname; an example can be found in Johannes Vermeer (van der meer "of the lake").

Nobility

The German "von" is a cognate of Dutch "van", though unlike the German "von", the Dutch "van" is more often part of a common surname than an indication of nobility or royalty. It can both imply nobility (Willem van Oranje "William of [the] Orange [family]") or signify any ancestral relation to a particular place (Jan van Ghent "John [who hails] from Ghent").

Other prepositions

Main article: Tussenvoegsel

The preposition "van" is the most widely used preposition in Dutch surnames, but many others are also used, although not always recognized as such if the whole surname is written as a single word. Just as "van" all these prepositions used to indicate geographical locations:

Apart from these prepositions the prefix "de" (not a preposition but an article, meaning "the") is also very common. They indicate a property, quality or origin, as in "de Lange" (the tall one), "de Korte" (the small one), "de Groot" (the big one), "de Zwart", "de Wit", "de Rode" (the one with black, white, red hair or skin), "de Rijke" (the rich one). The most widespread is "de Vries" (the Frisian).

For Dutch people of French (usually Huguenot) origin whose ancestors never modified their surnames to fit Dutch norms, the prefix "de" is a preposition similar in meaning to "van".

Spelling conventions

Collation and capitalisation

Collation and capitalisation of names differs between countries:

Concatenation

In some names, usually those of the Flemish/Belgian ones, and also some of the names of people from outside the Low Countries (with Dutch-speaking immigrant ancestors), the prefixes are concatenated to each other or to the name proper and form a single-worded or two-worded surnames, as in Vandervelde or Vande Velde. Prominent examples include "Vandenberg" and "Vanderbilt".

Names

In the United States some English surnames were later given the preposition Van, such as in the case of Van Owen or Van Blake. Since Owen and Blake don't represent geographical locations, they are recognizable as not original Dutch "van" surnames.

Prominent people with Van in their surname

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See also

Notes

  1. While Rembrandt was actually born close to the Rhine, he merely inherited the name from his father who already carried it. Van Susteren neither lived nor was she born in Susteren, but it can be assumed that her namesake patrilinear ancestor was. Such names often go back centuries and may once have been mere self-imposed titles that their children then adopted.

References

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