Abreviations => English => Dutch

Before actually delving in the genealogy of these family it may be helpful to the reader to understand the way in which the Dutch identified individuals. In most of the earlier records surnames were seldomly used. Instead they identified individuals by his father’s name, this is called patronymics. As an example let's say we have a man by the name of Jan who was the son of a man called Jan; he would be Jan Janzoon. "Zoon" in Dutch translates to "son" in English. Zoon attached to the end of a name means "son of"; "zoon" is often abbreviated to just a "s" or "se". Using our example above the name would quite often be found simply as Jan Jans or Jan Janse, etc. However other abbreviations are also frequently found: "sen", "sz", "szen", "szn", "z", "zen", and "zsen". Seldom do you see a person’s name that he was not identified in this way as the son of a certain man, even when a surname is given. (A genealogist dream! However, in many of the earlier records a person was identified in this manner, but with no surname, so it gets a little tricker in these cases.) Likewise dochter van means "daughter of", and is often found abbreviated as "dr" or sometimes in the same manner as "zoon", by the addition of an "s".