Dijkstra

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/dɛi̯kstraː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Dijkstra is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country, where it is the 23rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: From West Frisian Dykstra.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 735(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 57K
  • SESweden1 in 104K

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)

23,510 people, 2007

Sources
156 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 735 (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Dijkstra: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Dijkstra
  1. West FrisianDykstra(measured from records)
  2. West Frisian Dykstraor(inferred from the name graph)via Dykstra
  3. Old Frisiandik“dike”(inferred from the name graph)via Dykstra

Steps marked ◐ come from the entry for the form named above them, not from this name's own sources.

From West Frisian Dykstra.

Sources 1

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Dijkstra 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.

Where Dijkstra is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NL Netherlands#2323,5101 in 73524KDijkstra156
DE Germany—≈320 est.≈1 in 251K—Dijkstra55
ZA South Africa—≈240 est.≈1 in 239K—Dijkstra12
KE Kenya—≈200 est.≈1 in 275K—Dijkstra1
FR France—≈170 est.≈1 in 412K12—2
BE Belgium—1101 in 107K110Dijkstra25
SE Sweden—981 in 104K98Dijkstra17
NO Norway—961 in 57K96Dijkstra7
CH Switzerland—621 in 136K62Dijkstra10

23,510 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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Dijkstra is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, United States

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written D̠i̠j̠k̠s̠t̠r̠a̠

  • Russian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Netherlands

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Дейкстра, Деикстра

37 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

19001920194019601980Lou Dijkstra, b. 1909Bert Dijkstra, b. 1920Edsger W. Dijkstra, b. 1930Sjoukje Dijkstra, b. 1942Truus Dijkstra, b. 1951Pia Dijkstra, b. 1954Rineke Dijkstra, b. 1959Lenie Dijkstra, b. 1967Remco Dijkstra, b. 1972Peter Dijkstra, b. 1978

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)

FormalGeachte heer/mevrouw Dijkstra,Dear Dijkstra, (English)
InformalGeachte heer/mevrouw Dijkstra,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 23 sources across 15 countries.

Reference works 4

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 Dijkstra mean, and where does it come from?
From West Frisian Dykstra. Recorded by Wiktionary.
How do you pronounce Dijkstra?
A machine transcription gives /dɛi̯kstraː/ (IPA) for Dutch.
In which country does Dijkstra have the most bearers?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 24 thousand people named Dijkstra, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dijkstra.
Where is Dijkstra most common?
Dijkstra is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 735 people carrying it.
How common is the name Dijkstra?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 23,510 people named Dijkstra in 2007, about 1 in 735 residents.
How common is Dijkstra compared with other names?
In the Netherlands, Dijkstra is the 23rd most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Dijkstra?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dijkstra

The 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, “Dijkstra” — the 23rd most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Dijkstra parses inside a full name →