Klaas
given name · Western Frisian · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Klaas is a given name, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Western Frisian and Dutch, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from a reduced form of the personal name Nikolaus, Niklaas, vernacular forms of the Greek name Nikolaos (see Nicholas).
- NLNetherlands1 in 524◐
- ZASouth Africa1 in 8.3K
- DEGermany1 in 33K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈56K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 173 ●
- 1 in 476 ◐
across 9 countries
recorded for this name
44K records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Spellings & scripts●
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
from a reduced form of the personal name Nikolaus, Niklaas, vernacular forms of the Greek name Nikolaos (see Nicholas).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | #108 | 32,996△ | 11K rec. | 1 in 524 | 33K | Klaas | 121 |
| SE Sweden | — | 21,432△ | 40 rec. | 1 in 476 | 21K | — | 8 |
| ZA South Africa | #948 | 4,084 | 9K rec. | — | listed | Klaas | 33 |
| DE Germany | — | 3,661 | 7.3K rec. | — | 2 | Klaas | 121 |
| BE Belgium | — | 991 | 848 rec. | — | 17K | Klaas | 70 |
| DK Denmark | — | 837 | — | 1 in 7K | 837 | — | — |
| FR France | — | 403 | 549 rec. | — | 59 | Klaas | 77 |
| AU Australia | — | 397 | 505 rec. | — | 1 | Klaas | 53 |
| CA Canada | — | 329 | 483 rec. | — | 1 | Klaas | 36 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 260 | 568 rec. | — | — | Klaas | 35 |
| NO Norway | — | 212△ | 30 rec. | 1 in 26K | 472 | — | 7 |
| US United States | — | 195 | 12K rec. | 1 in 1.7M | 1.3K | Klaas | 173 |
Roughly 33K people in Netherlands bear this name (about 1 in 524). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Western Frisian56K36%
- Dutch49K31%
- English40K25%
- German5.1K3%
- Swahili9501%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Western Frisian | 56,170 | 36% |
| Dutch | 48,589 | 31% |
| English | 40,138 | 25% |
| German | 5,058 | 3% |
| Swahili | 950 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Klaas 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.
In German, Patronym zu Nikolaus (gr. Nikólaos 'Sieg' + 'Volk', lat. Nicolaus). 1916 Belege. Karte zeigt a-/aa-Vokalvariation und s/ss/ß-Schreibung (Klas/Klass/Klaas).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In German, Patronym zu der Kurzform von Nicolaus; zeigt K-Schreibung und monophthongiertes a. 8022 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
In German, ) Claas: männl. Vom., nieder deutsche und niederländische Kurzform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Estonian, glass (the material)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Dutch form of CLAUS .
as a word
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 19 |
| 2000 | 19 |
| 2001 | 19 |
| 2002 | 22 |
| 2003 | 22 |
| 2004 | 21 |
| 2005 | 17 |
| 2006 | 19 |
| 2007 | 20 |
| 2008 | 24 |
| 2009 | 22 |
| 2010 | 25 |
| 2011 | 26 |
| 2012 | 26 |
| 2013 | 24 |
| 2014 | 24 |
| 2015 | 27 |
| 2016 | 27 |
| 2017 | 28 |
| 2018 | 28 |
| 2019 | 30 |
| 2020 | 28 |
SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Klaas de Jongb. 1815NLDutch politician (1815-1886)
- Klaas Gubbelsb. 1934NLDutch painter and sculptor (born 1934)
- Klaas Nuningab. 1940NLDutch footballer
- Arjen Lenstrab. 1956NLnot in their usual nameDutch mathematician
- Klaas Knotb. 1967NLDutch economist (born 1967)
- Klaas de Jongb. 1968NLDutch film producer
- Klaas Dijkhoffb. 1981NLDutch former politician
- Klaasb. 1981DEGerman DJ
- Klaas-Jan Huntelaarb. 1983NLDutch association football player (born 1983)
- Klaas Heufer-Umlaufb. 1983DEGerman television host and actor
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 42 sources across 21 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 2026-09-12 data build · 88 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Klaas?
- We estimate roughly 56 thousand people bear Klaas (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Klaas have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 33 thousand people bear Klaas in the Netherlands, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled klaas.
- Where is Klaas most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Klaas is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 476 people — even though Netherlands holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Klaas compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Klaas is the 108th most common given name of 134,847 given names recorded there.
- Is Klaas a male or female name?
- Klaas is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Klaas mean?
- Recorded meaning: from a reduced form of the personal name Nikolaus, Niklaas, vernacular forms of the Greek name Nikolaos (see Nicholas).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/klaasThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Klaas” — the 108th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.