EU-DigestThe Netherlands: Why do the Dutch have so many crazy names? - its all Napoleons fault
In 1810 Napoleon Bonaparte annexed Holland, along with Switzerland and the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen. Holland had already, since 1806, been under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother, King Louis (Lodewijk) Bonaparte. However, not happy with his brother’s rather benevolent and friendly rule over Holland , and very unhappy with his brother's lack of serious enforcement of the ban on trade and shipping between Holland and arch-enemy Britain, Napoleon abolished the Kingdom of Holland in 1810, and a few months later annexed it and placed it under direct French rule. Even though Napoleon pretty much plundered Holland and eventually left it in economic shambles, both he and his brother instituted civil reforms, codes and laws that would form the basis for much of the Netherlands’ civil law as it exists today. Louis established a monetary system using the Guilder, along with a penal law code. Other laws were applied, all modeled on French law.
As part of the total Dutch emersion into the French civil code system, Napoleon, on August 11, 1811, decreed the mandatory registration of births, deaths and marriages, and compulsory military service. According to the decree, in part: "Those of our subjects of the Departments of the former Holland… who until now have not had fixed surnames and given names, must adopt them during the year, and declare them before the officers of the civil registry… where they reside…Those having known surnames… will be excepted. They who wish to conserve their names will nevertheless be required to declare them." While the decree seems quite clear, the story how the Dutch adopted, invented or changed their family names becomes quite complicated and maybe even hilarious. Prior to the Napoleonic era in Holland, family names were not legally required and thousands of Dutch people did not have “proper” family names at all. In the pre-Napoleon era the Dutch traditionally used a “patronymic” system,in which “the father’s first name became the first son’s last name, and the other kids got the left over names from the grandfather, great grandfather and so on.
So when the Napoleonic order came, the Dutch with their independent mind, pragmatism, stubbornness, and believe it or not, sense of humor, most Dutch did not take Napoleon seriously and looked at this “name system” as a temporary law that would be repealed once Napoleon left Holland. So, they deliberately adopted and registered family names that were funny, ridiculous, confusing, and sometimes even sexual and offensive-sounding—many of the latter supposedly at the expense of Napoleon and the French occupiers. Names selected included: Naaktgeboren (Born naked) •Suikerbuik (Sugar belly) • Spring in ‘t Veld (Jump in the Field)• Poepjes (Little sh*t) • Schooier (bum) • van den Boom ( From the tree) • Scheefnek (Crooked-neck) • Piest (urinates) • Zeldenthuis (Hardly ever home) • van Puffelen (the farter) •Rotmensen (Rotten people) • De Keizer (The Emperor - to mock Napolean). Unfortunately selecting weird and funny names was a joke that backfired for the Dutch. The civil registration system introduced by Napoleon has “stuck” to this day—and so have most of those silly, funny, strange Dutch family names.
