Koen

given name · Dutch · Latin script

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

Koen is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Dutch and Western Frisian, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: nickname from Middle Dutch coen(e) ‘bold’, ‘daring’ or personal name Cono with the same meanKoepp ing.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 953
  • BEBelgium1 in 1.4K
  • USUnited States1 in 4.8K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈92K

across 11 countries

4

recorded for this name

Sources
220

114K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 953

Netherlands

Spellings & scripts

KoenLatin · Dutch42K records
เก่งThai · Thai3K records
고언Hangul · Korean11 records
קאןHebrew · Yiddish0 records

Locally spelled Keng in US United States, MY Malaysia, AU Australia and 5 more, Gain in IN India, เก่ง in TH Thailand and Khen in PH Philippines.

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

nickname from Middle Dutch coen(e) ‘bold’, ‘daring’ or personal name Cono with the same meanKoepp ing.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Koen is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States69,07344K rec.1 in 4.8K69KKenG220
NL Netherlands#20018,12915K rec.1 in 95318KKoen142
MY Malaysia#50112,54513K rec.KenG70
BE Belgium#13011,2429.1K rec.74Koen132
TH Thailand8,5726.2K rec.#845,127เก่ง124
PH Philippines3,7261.5K rec.Khen45
AU Australia3,3905.8K rec.4KenG89
CA Canada1,7881.3K rec.10Koen42
SG Singapore#3631,6942.2K rec.KenG85
GB United Kingdom1,5892.3K rec.9KenG56
NO Norway1,52799 rec.1 in 3.6K3.7KKoen13
SE Sweden1,44184 rec.1 in 7.1K1.4KKoen12

Roughly 69K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 4.8K). 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

  • Dutch42K35%
  • Western Frisian35K29%
  • English28K23%
  • German2.2K2%
  • French2.1K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Dutch41,70035%
Western Frisian35,09629%
English27,58623%
German2,1842%
French2,1072%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way

Koen is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name2.9K records spelled Koen4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Koën, Köen

  • Chinese given name1.4K records spelled Koen2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Belgium, Netherlands, China, Taiwan

    Also written Ko-En

  • a separate given name1.3K records spelled Koen5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Belgium, United States, Netherlands, United Kingdom

    Also written Köen, Koén, Koèn, Koėn

  • Hindi given name778 records spelled Koen3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Netherlands, Belgium, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Koën

41 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.

Other recorded senses

Koen 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 Dutch, courageous

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • the priest; Belgrado, Novi Sad, Buenos Aires

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In Dutch, one of the many forms of Cohen.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Finnish, first-person singular present indicative of kokea

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Indonesian, Second-person singular pronoun: you, your, yours

    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.

Over time

0200400600200020102020468 · 2023

Show as table
Koen in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1996–2025
Yearrecords
19965
19979
199818
199914
200025
200125
200262
200369
2004144
2005154
2006233
2007160
2008242
2009216
2010213
2011166
2012174
2013179
2014215
2015201
2016181
2017148
2018161
2019148
2020162
2021219
2022310
2023468
2024401
2025448

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)30 years between 1996–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

19401960198020002020Koen Geens, b. 1958Koen De Bouw, b. 1964Koen De Graeve, b. 1972Koen de Kort, b. 1982Koen van der Biezen, b. 1985Koen Naert, b. 1989Koen Verweij, b. 1990Koen Casteels, b. 1992Zeno Debast, b. 2003

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 52 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Koen
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)18K#132
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)17K#220
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.1K#5,478
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.4K#18,843
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.4K#18,594
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.4K#19,834
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007745#2,415
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025448
NL NetherlandsSVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered)2017141#113
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)122#12,813
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)84#8,659
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)62#6,878

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 · 211 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Koen?
We estimate roughly 92 thousand people bear Koen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Koen have the most bearers?
We estimate about 69 thousand people bear Koen in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled KenG.
Where is Koen most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Koen is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 953 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is Koen compared with other names?
In Belgium, Koen is the 130th most common given name of 58,504 given names recorded there.
Is Koen a male or female name?
Koen 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 Koen mean?
Recorded meaning: nickname from Middle Dutch coen(e) ‘bold’, ‘daring’ or personal name Cono with the same meanKoepp ing.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/koen

The 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

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

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, “Koen” — the 130th most common given name in Belgium. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Koen parses inside a full name →