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What’s in a name?

April 17th, 2008 | By: Jan | 25 Comments »

From left to right: Vennegoor and Hesselink

I can imagine names of Dutch players don’t really have a meaning for our foreign fans. I was triggered to this aspect by an article on Morrocan names and their actual meaning. I will add that article to this post, but let’s start start with the players we know and love so well.

The players with “van” in their name (in English “of”), like Van Basten, Van Nistelrooy, Van Breukelen, Van Tiggelen, Van der Vaart…
The “van” is mostly a location related name. Marco’s family apparently came from the town of Basten. Ruud’s family is from the village Nistelrode. And so on… In Rafael’s case, I couldn’t find a town called Vaart, so maybe instead of a town, the name suggest a heritage of seafarers… Like John van ‘t Schip (Of the Ship). Bommel is a townsname, as is Marwijk. Some names don’t have the “van” but still point at geographical locations, like Vanenburg.

Some names are linked to the profession of the name-givers. Frank and Ronald are from a family of Boeren (farmers). As are the Koemannen, I’d say (Cow man). Or Sneijder… Which I believe is old Dutch for Kleermaker (Taylor). Or Reiziger: traveller.

Players with surnames that are actually first names, plus the “s” are easy. Jan Wouters, Johan Neeskens, Ron Jans, Edgar Davids… The “s” stands for “son of”. So, son of Wouter, son of Neesken, son of Jan, son of David. Other versions are “sen” behind their name. Like Joris Mathijsen: son of Mathijs.

Vennegoor of Hesselink’s name is English. The “of” is the english “of” and not the Dutch one. In Dutch it would translate as “or”. But he is basically the Vennegoor (family) of Hesselink (a geographical place).

Other names that spring to mind: Seedorf… Little village by the sea (Zeedorp). Kluivert could point at the way the family used to eat. In Dutch, the verb “kluiven” means to eat meat with your hands and pull the meat off the bone with your teeth. Hence: Kluivert (he who eats meat with his hands).
The real root of Patrick’s name is actually Clifford, a name that appears often in Suriname.

Cocu is a bit of a puzzle. It’s certainly not a Dutch name with meaning and one has to suppose that Phillip’s family is from France/Spain and they fled the Spanish Inquisition, like so many did in the late Middle Ages.

This is all a bit tongue in cheek, my friends. So, if you have any additions, feel free… .

Once there was a time where the term “boeren” (farmers) was meant as an insult. The players of De Graafschap and PSV however, like to be called “boeren”. One of PSV’s most important players is actually called “De Boer”. It’s not Ronald, or Frank. But Ibrahim. Affelay means “farmer” in Arabic.

El Akchaoui, player of NEC, is called The Guinea Pig, when translated.

Another player of NEC is called Saidi Ntibazonkizea. His surname doesn’t fit his shirt and the media call him only by his first name. His surname actually means “No one can heal me but God”. Saidi, his first name, means The Fortunate One.

Karim El Ahmadi, one of FC Twente’s best players (he signed for Feyenoord last week) is named after the Messias, or El Salvador. FC Twente fans will concur. JC was called El Salvador by the Barca fans, but not because of his name, purely on the basis of his skills.

Former Feyenoord striker Boussaboun’s name means “soapmaker”.

Valencia player Hedwiges Maduro’s forefather was the founder of Madurodam in Den Haag, the popular tourist-spot where one can see Holland even smaller than it already is. In Spain, they like his name. It means “ripe” or “mature”.

When Ugur Yildirim played for Heerenveen, his name was translated on the pitch by his feet. His name means “lightning”.

Former Sparta player Rahamat Mustapha’s name means Grace The Chosen one. Not a bad name to have in your team.

Jonathan de Guzman’s roots are Spanish. It’s derived from Gundamaris, or son of Gundemar, a Visigotic king in Iberia. It basically means Knight. We also have Daniel de Ridder, the former Ajax winger, and “ridder” also means Knight.

Ismail Aissati’s name is not easily translated but if needed the best word would be “artist”. Nomen est omen.

Cor Varkevisser, goalie at Sparta, never knew what his name meant. Literally, it can be translated as “pigfisher”. How do you fish for pigs. But, it seems, the term pigs in the old days was used for dolphins. Sea-pigs.

Former Roda defender Sonkaya also has a good fitting name: the last rock!

Fouad Idabdelhay’s name can mean several things, but the player himself thinks it stands for “servant of the always living”… And that would be God, of course…

Nordin Amrabat is one of the biggest talents in The Netherlands. The youngster signed a contract for PSV. His surname means sanctuary.

Tags: Afellay, Background stories, de Guzman, Group C, Oranje, The Netherlands, Vennegoor

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Comments

By goose | April 17th, 2008 at 6:20 am

The Kluivert comment is hillarious!! hahah..actually never ‘ saw ‘ that one..

Maduro from Madurodam is not the founder…as far as i know Maduro was a canadian soldier who died during the liberation of Holland in 1945….his parents built a spot to remember him…thats why its called Madurodam

iusnt Cocu some kind of swear word in frensh>> remember hearing something like that during the WC98??

Posted from Netherlands

By Bruce | April 17th, 2008 at 6:23 am

Fun stuff. What about Cruijff?

My last name is Mans, so I am the Son of Man! Haha.

I didn’t know that Vennegoor of Hesselink was English. I though maybe his family came from two different places and they didn’t want to pick one…

Posted from Republic Of Korea

By bodo | April 17th, 2008 at 6:48 am

Cocu is a french Name ( South French Prostestants migrated in NL to flee religious prosecutions, “the Hugenots”, in the XVI Century.
It means simply “cukhold” in the first sense but also nowadays “lucky” in a second sense.
He was not lucky for his last game in oranje as his header hitted the post against Portugal .

Posted from France

By ClockworkOrange | April 17th, 2008 at 6:51 am

Great post Jan!

But, I think the Vennegoor explanation is a little off. The ‘of’ is in fact the Dutch ‘of’ meaning ‘or’. According to the Guardian:

According to our research, the new Celtic striker was thus named because, way back in the 17th century, two farming families in the Enschede area of Holland intermarried. Both the Vennegoor and Hesselink names carried equal social weight, and so – rather than choose between them – they chose to use both.

‘Of’ in Dutch actually translates to ‘or’, which would mean that a strict translation of his name would read Jan Vennegoor or Hesselink.

As for Cocu… it’s a French name meaning cuckold – i.e. a man whose wife cheats on him! Not exactly the proudest name, but it didn’t seem to affect his playing ability.

Posted from United Kingdom

By goose | April 17th, 2008 at 7:57 am

hehe, thats the nice thing on this blog..with people from all over the world we have lots of different info

btw; think clockwork (read Guardian) is right…. almost all names from Enschede and area end with …NK (Wilmink, Velderink etc.)

names from Surinam players can be pretty funny too…they have great translations like Zuiverloon (zuiver – loon) wich means (pure – income); Netto income!!

Posted from Netherlands

By simon | April 17th, 2008 at 9:38 am

Bouma? Melchiot? Zenden? Kuijt? Drenthe?

Whats this thing with the cus/dus ending of pretty many Dutch names? Like, Frank de Boers real name is Franciscus de Boer, Ronald de Boers real name is Ronaldus. My good old Pierre is really Petrus Ferdinandus van Hooijdonk.

By Jan | April 17th, 2008 at 9:45 am

I belive Bouma is a Fries’ name, like Fopma, Bokma, etc. Melchiot could be another French name… Kuijt is a term for fish eggs. Kuit. Kuyt is born in a fishermen’s village. In Volendam you’d find Jonk, Jol, Tol, Den Boer…

The us after names is the Catholic version. Josephus. Gerardus. Eduardus.

But, really, I don’t no squat about all this

Posted from Australia

By ClockworkOrange | April 17th, 2008 at 11:45 am

Drenthe is a province in the north-east of the Netherlands.

Posted from United Kingdom

By goose | April 17th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

@simon; thats just a Catholic thing… name givin at babtism and ‘calling name’…(in dutch doopnaam en roepnaam)

All names with – uij- in de name is from the province North-Holland, Kuijt,Cruijff, Kruijs

names like Jonk, Veerman,Tol, Jol are Volendam names but they are also found in other fishing communities like Scheveningen (Martin Jol)

names with van, and van der are more found in the Southern provincies altough nowadas its not so region bounded as it used to be

anything with -a- at the end is Frysian

and now over to football;

That shitty Koeman still has a job!! lucky basterd

Posted from Netherlands

By Caleb | April 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

Very interesting article! I always enjoy learning stuff like this. I knew the “van” thing before, but the other stuff is interesting. I heard before that my last name (reinink) means from rein’s land or something like that… does that sound right to you guys?

Posted from Canada

By Igor | April 17th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

for some reason, i was under the impression that Cocu’s parents were French and immigrated to the Netherlands before he was born…french being my first language, I always did find his name odd and like clockwork said not the proudest, maybe that is why i never owned an oranje jersey with Cocu’s name on it, despite the fact that he is one of my favourite players and one whose style of play i try to emulate.

Posted from Canada

By 10brook | April 17th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

great post, thanks jan. a little education with my football. me being a fourth generation american (great-grandparents were dutch) I didn’t have much of an idea about all this, other than van. what about henk ten cate, we share the ‘ten’ as my last name is ten brook. (i like to think i was born to be the attacking midfielder i pretend to be on the field)

Posted from United States

By Micheal | April 17th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Interesting article. The Affelay, boeren match is pretty neat. My last name is Spiering does anyone know what that means?

By Jan | April 17th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

Ten Cate and Ten Brook points at a geographical location, I believe. Ten can be seen as “at”. It could also be a derivative of “den”, which is short for “van den” or “of the”… Again, geographical roots. Spiering is a name for a fish, so maybe it points at a fishing heritage as well?

Posted from Australia

By Jan | April 17th, 2008 at 5:55 pm

Recently someone did a research on JC’s name and genealogy. Johan is not Jewish, as most people believed. Ajax of course has Jewish roots and has a lot of Jewish fans, sponsors, managers and members (Sjaak Swart, Bennie Muller, Coronel). Cruyff – or Kruif – is a old Dutch name for someone who holds birds, in particular doves if I’m not mistaken.

Posted from Australia

By goose | April 18th, 2008 at 2:23 am

@10brook; my guess is your original name was ‘ten broek’…’brook’is not a dutch name, “broek” is

never knew people tought Johan was jewish…never heard such a thing

@Caleb; Reinink? dont know what it means but surely your forfathers were from the east of Holland

here a fun link, type in your family name and youll find how many are found in each province

http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nfd/

grtz

Posted from Netherlands

By goose | April 18th, 2008 at 2:23 am

btw; thats for people with dutch surnames ony

Posted from Netherlands

By Caleb | April 18th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Cool link, thanks Goose! I’m going to have to show this to my parents.

Posted from Canada

By Jan | April 18th, 2008 at 9:37 pm

That’s just wonderful my friend Goose!!

I could deduct where I’m from. Through my name I found the root name (German…AAARRGGGHHHH…) and traced it to the area where my family is from. I even checked Google Earth and saw the little village.

HAHA (crazy laugh like Dr Evil)

Posted from Australia

By goose | April 19th, 2008 at 4:38 am

@jan; german eh?!! haaha…

Posted from Netherlands

By Finnster01 | April 19th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

Excellent thread as always.

Just to add my 2-cents, if you ever wanted to know what your Brazilian soccer name would be if you played for Brazil try this link. It automatically generates your Brazilian name (and a paper shirt you can print out) based on your real first and last name:-)

http://www.minimalsworld.net/BrazilName/brazilian.shtml

Just ran JC and it came up as: Crueca…Not sure if I like that one but Marco Van Basten comes out as “Marcao” which surely has a special ring and flair to it.

Mine came out crap, won’t even bother to post it, not that there were ever any danger of me pulling on a Brasilian jersey. Although I will say I did have my moments in the playground and for my little local team.

Posted from United States

By Jan | April 19th, 2008 at 10:34 pm

This is fun! I remember this site from the WC. I’ll start checking my name

Posted from Australia

By Jan | April 19th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

I am Jisco!!!!

HAHAHAHAAAA (mad scientist laugh)

Posted from Australia

By Finnster01 | April 19th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

That’s not bad, a hell of a lot better than “Christensmar”.

Sounds like I am the reserve keeper wearing out the bench on a Belgian team of Ghent’s stature

Posted from United States