Dutch family name database online

All 314,000 family names recorded in the municipal personal records database in 2007 have been introduced in a database, which became available to the public yesterday. This Dutch family name database is a joint project of the Meertens Instituut and Utrecht University.

The family name database lists the number of bearers for every name. If a name occurs more than five times, a distribution map is provided as well. For the sake of comparison, the names from the census of 1947 have also been included.
Additional information is available for approximately one hundred thousand family names such as an explanation of the name, older mentions, and onomastic and genealogic literature references. Additionally, genealogic links and links to name variants and web pages about specific types and components of names are included. A direct connection with the catalog of the Central Bureau for Genealogy is available for many names. The population of the Netherlands increased from 9.5 to 16 million between 1947 and 2007 and the number of bearers of many names has increased accordingly. The number of occurrence of some family names has more than doubled, however, and other names have become rarer or even disappeared. And immigrants have added a large number of new family names.