List of Dutch family names

Dutch family names were not required until 1811 when emperor Napoleon annexed the Netherlands; prior to 1811, the use of patronymics was much more common.
In Dutch linguistics, many names use certain "qualifying" words (prepositions) which are positioned between a person's given name and their surname. Although these words, "tussenvoegsels", are not strictly essential to state the person's surname, they are nevertheless a part of the surname and are almost always included for clarity. For example, someone whose family name is "De Vries" is not found at the letter "D" in the telephone directory but at "V"; the "de" is a "tussenvoegsel" and is not a part of the indexing process but rather is more of a stylistic qualifier. Another reason for this methodology is that it makes finding someone's name in a database relatively easy, since most Dutch prepositions start with the same letter (and thus if the prepositions led, there would be constant superfluous data entry to arrive at the desired name).
In the Netherlands, the "tussenvoegsel" is written with a capital letter if no name precedes it. For example:
"See also the main Dutch surnames section."
List of Dutch surnames.
This random sampling of Dutch surnames is sorted by surname, with the tussenvoegsel following the name after a comma. Meanings are provided where known. See and for surnames with their own pages.