Kooistra
surname · Latin script
Meaning: occupational name for a decoy man, from an agent derivative of Middle Dutch kooye ‘decoy’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/kuˈɪztɹə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kooistra is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 3.1K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 366K
- HUHungary≈1 in 34K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 169 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
5,574 people, 2007
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)occupational name for a decoy man, from an agent derivative of Middle Dutch kooye ‘decoy’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kooistra counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | #254 | 5,574 | 1 in 3.1K | 5.6K | Kooistra | 94 |
| US United States | — | 910 | 1 in 366K | 983 | Kooistra | 169 |
| HU Hungary | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Kooistra | 2 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 161K | — | Kooistra | 65 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 654K | — | Kooistra | 34 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 323K | — | Kooistra | 36 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 323K | — | Kooistra | 1 |
5,574 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Jan Kooistrab. 1894NLDutch politician
- Pieter Kooistrab. 1922NLDutch painter (1922-1998)
- Wopkje Hutting-Kooistrab. 1924NLFrisian ice skater (1924-2017)
- Jack Kooistrab. 1930NLDutch journalist, historian and Nazi hunter (1930–2025)
- Harrie Koorstrab. 1930NLnot in their usual nameDutch canoeist
- Lorraine Janzen Kooistrab. 1953CAprofessor of English
- Jeffrey Kooistrab. 1968NLDutch association football player
- Maria Kooistrab. 1975NLDutch actress
- Scott Kooistrab. 1980USplayer of American football
- Wytze Kooistrab. 1982NLvolleyball player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)19 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 5.6K | #134 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 983 | #26,183 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 910 | #26,747 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 777 | #28,824 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kooistra mean, and where does it come from?
- occupational name for a decoy man, from an agent derivative of Middle Dutch kooye ‘decoy’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kooistra?
- A machine transcription gives /kuˈɪztɹə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kooistra have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 5.6 thousand people named Kooistra, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kooistra.
- Where is Kooistra most common?
- Kooistra is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 3.1 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kooistra?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 5,574 people named Kooistra in 2007, about 1 in 3.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Kooistra compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Kooistra is the 254th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kooistra?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kooistraThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kooistra” — the 254th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.