Douwe
given name · Latin script
Meaning: singular present subjunctive of douwen
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 9 countries · latest register: Siseministeerium, 2023
/dɑu̯ə/(machine-generated) Dutch · model-generated · uncertain
Douwe is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.9K(measured from records)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 120K
- SESweden1 in 510K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 106 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)
8,965 people
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)singular present subjunctive of douwen
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Douwe 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 | #588 | 8,965 | 1 in 1.9K | 9K | Douwe | 106 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 492K | — | Douwe | 9 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈98 est. | ≈1 in 121K | — | Douwe | 22 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | 1 | Douwe | 35 |
| US United States | — | ≈63 est. | ≈1 in 5.4M | — | Douwe | 70 |
| NO Norway | — | ≈32 est. | ≈1 in 177K | 26 | Douwe | 5 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 119K | listed | — | 4 |
8,965 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); the de-duesseldorf-vornamen register; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); the ee-siseministeerium-registry register. 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)Douwe is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In enm, alternative form of dowen
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)- Douwe Aukesb. 1612NLFrisian sea captain
- Hendrik Kloostermanb. 1900NLnot in their usual nameDutch mathematician (1900-1968)
- Douwe Fokkemab. 1931NLDutch linguist & sinologist (1931-2011)
- Dick Rienstrab. 1941NLnot in their usual nameDutch actor (1941–2021)
- Douwe Breimerb. 1943NLDutch pharmacologist
- Douwe Draaismab. 1953NLDutch writer, university teacher and psychologist (born 1953)
- Douwe Eisengab. 1961NLDutch composer
- Douwe de Vriesb. 1982NLDutch speed skater (born 1982)
- Douwe Amelsb. 1991NLDutch sportsperson and athletics competitor
- Douwe Bobb. 1992NLDutch singer & songwriter
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)17 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 9K | #246 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 5.7K | #639 |
| NL Netherlands | SVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered) | 2016 | 50 | #316 |
| NL Netherlands | SVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered) | 2017 | 37 | #414 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 26 | #17,126 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 6 | #30,678 |
| DE Germany | Stadt Düsseldorf Open Data — Vornamen Neugeborene | 2015 | 1 | — |
| EE Estonia | Siseministeerium — population register name list 2023 | 2023 | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Douwe mean, and where does it come from?
- singular present subjunctive of douwen Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Douwe?
- In Dutch /dɑu̯ə/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Douwe a male or female name?
- Douwe is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Netherlands (Meertens NVB).
- In which country does Douwe have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 9.0 thousand people named Douwe, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled douwe.
- Where is Douwe most common?
- Douwe is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.9 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Douwe?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 8,965 people named Douwe, about 1 in 1.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Douwe compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Douwe is the 588th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Douwe?
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/douweThe 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, “Douwe” — the 588th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.