Molen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ornamental surname from mo ‘sandy heath’ -tthe adjectival suffix -en, a derivative of Latin -enius
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈmoʊɫən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Molen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 473K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 524K
- TCTurks & Caicos Islands≈1 in 10K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 203 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
703 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Turks & Caicos Islands, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
ornamental surname from mo ‘sandy heath’ -tthe adjectival suffix -en, a derivative of Latin -enius.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Molen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 703 | 1 in 473K | 782 | Molen | 203 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 389K | — | Molen | 50 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 612K | — | Molen | 39 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 529K | — | Molen | 12 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 625K | — | Molen | 2 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈91 est. | ≈1 in 280K | — | Molen | 32 |
| NL Netherlands | #402 | 33 | 1 in 524K | 33 | Molen | 85 |
| NO Norway | — | 32 | 1 in 171K | 32 | Molen | 6 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 377K | — | Molen | 6 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 301K | — | Molen | 12 |
| TC Turks & Caicos Islands | #562 | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Molen | 1 |
703 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Molen is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
habitational name from any of numerous places named Ter Molen or Ter Meulen (from molen ‘mill’).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Dutch, mill
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Dutch
topographic name from molen ‘mill’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Catalan, third-person plural present indicative of moldre
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, third-person plural present indicative of mulir
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Hendrik Jan van der Molenb. 1911NLBelgian police officer (1911–2005)
- Wiebe van der Molenb. 1922NLPh.D.
- Gerald R. Molenb. 1935USAmerican film producer
- Henk van der Molenb. 1954NLDutch psychologist
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)
Attested in 18 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 782 | #31,685 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 703 | #32,676 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 653 | #33,054 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 33 | #39,311 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 32 | #33,531 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Molen mean, and where does it come from?
- ornamental surname from mo ‘sandy heath’ -tthe adjectival suffix -en, a derivative of Latin -enius. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Molen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈmoʊɫən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Molen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 703 people named Molen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled molen.
- How common is the name Molen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 703 people named Molen in 2010, about 1 in 473 thousand residents.
- How common is Molen compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Molen is the 402nd most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Molen?
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/molenThe 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, “Molen” — the 402nd most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.