Van (Dutch)


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 or residence; for example, Ludwig van Beethoven "from Bettenhoven" and Rembrandt van Rijn "from the Rhine". Van is also a preposition in the Dutch and Afrikaans languages, meaning "of" or "from" depending on the context. Van also exists as a surname in its own right, but as such it's very rare.
In surnames, it can appear by itself or in combination with an article. 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 grammatically neuter article het. The contraction ver-, based on van der, is also common and can be written as a single word with the rest of the surname; an example being Johannes Vermeer.

Related prepositions

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" is also very common. They indicate a property, quality or origin, as in "de Lange", "de Korte", "de Groot", "de Zwart", "de Wit", "de Rode", "de Rijke". The most widespread is "de Vries".
For Dutch people of French 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

and capitalisation of names differs between countries:
In some names, usually those of the Flemish/Belgian ones, and also some of the names of people from outside the Low Countries, 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".

Nobility

The German "von" is a linguistic cognate of the Dutch "van", however, unlike the German "von", the Dutch "van" is not indicative of the person's nobility or royalty. Van has a history of being used by commoners and nobility alike to simply signify ancestral relation to a particular place,.

Prominent people with "van" in their surname