You probably have had many conversations with people asking you “can you please spell your last name?” adding “hmm, that is not a very common name” (or in the Netherlands they often refer to an assistant in a police series named Vledder). But exactly how unique is our name? And are we expanding or declining in numbers? Please find out and enjoy other trivia on questions you probably never asked yourself.
The wordcloud left shows all the names (official first name) for everyone born as a van Vledder. Pieter (Peter) is the most common name amongst the van Vledders. We have no less than 21 Pieters in our family tree. Other common names for the boys were Johannes (John / Jan / Jack), Cornelis (Cees) and Maarten / Marten). Popular names for the girls are Johanna (Hanneke, Jannetje), Margaretha (Grietje, Margriet) and Wilhelmina (Wil, Willy)
Believe it or not, but you can admire the Mona Lisa in Vledder. Along with paintings from Rembrandt, Picasso, Matisse and many more. Not the real ones of course, but you can visit the museum of fake art in Vledder. Yes it’s real, a museum of fake art. Click here for details
kilometer or 11492 miles. That is how far Michael and Cindy van Vledder have to travel (in a straight line) when they want to visit Vledder. Michael and Cindy moved from South Africa to New Zealand a couple of years ago and are are living in Hanmer Springs with their 2 sons Timothy and Caleb.
Yes, only 82 ! 30 of them are born in South Africa, 29 in the Netherlands and 23 in Australia. All these numbers may not be 100% accurate yet since not all van Vledders might be on the radar yet. On the other hand, some van Vledders that I assume still alive may not be alive anymore. But one statement we can safely make is that the van Vledders certainly are not responsible for the overpopulation on the planet …..
So far, the research has dug op quite a lot Van Vledders and people somehow related to them. About 2/3 of all people in the tree are true van Vledders (registered at birth) while the other 1/3 had either the privilege of marrying one or having a van Vledder mother. As of now, 58% had Dutch parents, 25% South African and 17% Australian. As there are still some white spots in the research, this number will probably grow a bit more.
Oops, that’s a bit scary isn’t it? The average age at which van Vledders died is only 45. The good news however is that this number is rising rapidly. Health conditions in the 17th, 18th and 19th century were quite poor and the historic distribution is dramatically skewed by the fact that no less than 30% of the van Vledders died before the age of 10. You Aussies are lucky that Philip James, who emigrated to Australia, made it, since 5 out of his 7 siblings died before the age of 10
The oldest van Vledder so far was Jan Albert van Vledder, born in 1916. He did extensive research on our family history and was the initiator / founder of this site. He programmed the first version when he was already in his eighties ! We are still reaping the benefits of all his good work and owe him a lot of gratitude. Jan Albert died in 2018 at the age of 102 !
In Australia, Monica Lyons, daughter of Florence May van Vledder, turned 100 in December 2020. The oldest (born as) Van Vledder currently alive is John in South Africa (oldest son of Emile) who was born Jan 26 1936.
Yep, this millennium only 8 male van Vledders are born so far:
So we are truly an endangered species. Work to be done !
Yep, still counting. It’s phenomenal in how many ways people can screw up writing our name right. This must be the same across all geographies. This also made the research of the family tree much harder since sometimes some van Vledders could only be found by trying different spellings.