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 Beethoven" 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.
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.
Spelling conventions
Collation and capitalisation
and capitalisation of names differs between countries. In the Netherlands and Suriname, names starting with "van" are filed under the initial letter of the following name proper, so Johannes van der Waals is filed under "W", as: "Waals, Johannes van der" or "van der Waals, Johannes". The "v" is written in lower case, except when the surname is used as standalone, in which case it is capitalised, as in "de schilder Vincent van Gogh" and "de schilder Van Gogh. In compound terms like "de Van Goghtentoonstelling the "v" is capitalised, unless the connection between the person and the concept is or has become very weak.In Belgium, any surnames beginning with "Van" or "van" are filed under "V". So for example Eric Van Rompuy is listed under the "V" section, not under the "R". The lowercase spelling in a name from the Netherlands is respected but not necessarily differentiated in alphabetical ordering and its Dutch style capitalisation for certain usages is generally unknown and thus not followed. The painter's full name, however, having become commonplace, is usually spelled Vincent Van Gogh in Belgium. In Flemish surnames the "V" is always capitalised though a following interjected "de", "den" or "der" usually stays lowercase.
In South Africa, the Afrikaans surname Van der Merwe would be listed under the "v" section - as is done in Belgium - and not under "m", as in "Merwe, J. van der"; however, South Africa follows the same capitalisation convention as the Netherlands.
In anglicised versions of Dutch names, the "van is almost always capitalised in the United States, but in the British Isles some families of Dutch origin continue to use the Dutch form.
Names in other languages may contain a component "Van" that is unrelated to the Dutch preposition. The common Vietnamese middle name "Văn", often spelled in English text without diacritics, as in "Pham Van Tra", is a male given name, implying education. Where the "Van" is not of Dutch origin, such as in the Vietnamese middle name Wen or Van,, the "v" is not lowercase.
Concatenation
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 necessarily indicative of the person's nobility or royalty. Van has a history of being used by nobility and commoners alike to simply signify ancestral relation to a particular place.Related prepositions
The preposition "van" is the most widely used preposition in Dutch surnames, but many others are also used, although not always recognised as such if the whole surname is written as a single word. Just as "van" all these prepositions used to indicate geographical locations:- te – meaning "at",, e.g., ter Beek
- thoe/thor – being the old forms of te as in Thorbecke
- aan – meaning "at" or "aside", e.g., aan de Stegge
- op – meaning "on", e.g., as in Op den Akker
- in – meaning "in", in 't Veld
- bij – meaning "at" : Bij 't Vuur
- uit – or archaic uyt, meaning "out" or "from", e.g. Uytdehaage.
- over – meaning "over" or "from the other side", as in Overeem
- onder – meaning "under" or "below" or "at the bottom", Onderdijk, Onderwater
- achter – meaning "behind" Achterberg
- bezuiden – meaning "south of": Bezuidenhout
- boven – meaning "above" or "up": Bovelander
- buiten – meaning "outside" or "in the country": Buitenhuis
- voor – meaning "in front of",
- zonder – meaning "without": Zonderland or Zondervan
For Dutch people of French origin whose ancestors never modified their surnames to fit Dutch norms, the prefix "de" is a French preposition similar in meaning to "van".