Afrikaans Name Generator

Afrikaans names grew out of the Dutch, German and French Huguenot families who settled the Cape from the 1650s onward, and the surnames still show it. Dutch gives van der Merwe, van Wyk, Pretorius, Botha and Venter; Huguenot French gives du Plessis, du Toit, Joubert, le Roux, de Villiers, Marais, Theron and Malan; German gives Kruger, Muller, Strauss and Kotzé. Afrikaans keeps the lowercase particle and the spacing (van der Walt, du Preez, le Grange), and long compounds like Janse van Rensburg and van der Westhuizen are everyday.

Given names run in two layers. The older layer is biblical or Dutch and appears in full on a birth certificate (Johannes, Jacobus, Gerhardus, Susanna, Magdalena) but is shortened in daily life to Johan, Kobus, Gert, Sannie or Magda; nicknames like Koos, Frikkie, Hennie and Sarie are names in their own right. The modern layer, popular since the 1990s, prefers short two-syllable coinages: Ruan, Tiaan, Wian and Divan for boys, Zanri, Anri, Chané and Suné for girls, often with an accent on the final syllable.

Afrikaans is also the home language of most of the Western Cape Coloured community, where surnames like Arendse, Cupido, Fortuin, Jantjies and September pair with English first names. Double-barrelled first names (Pieter-Dirk, Lize-Mari) and surnames used as first names (Uys, Retief, Du Toit) round out the picture.