I write about language, and I like being on Threads. It’s text-based social media with an algorithm that does a pretty good job at showing me stuff I am interested in.
Recently, somebody appeared on my feed asking “why isn’t a strawberry called an earth-berry, like it is in Dutch?”
Why is it “strawberry”, and not “earth-berry”?
Great question. I did some quick research and found out that English is indeed an anomaly here; almost all Germanic languages call the sweet red fruit an earth-berry.
So why strawberry? My research suggested there were several possible explanations, but that the one currently favoured by many etymologists is one set out by medieval western languages expert William Sayers.
His explanation also happens to be quite satisfying for Dutch speakers, and as etymologies that are quite satisfying for Dutch speakers are my bread and butter, I was happy to post my answer, (which I will paraphrase here as I wrote it in Dutch):
The “straw” in “strawberry” probably refers to the verb “to be strewn”. The plant likes to propagate itself around; for Dutch speakers: to strooi (=spread) itself around.
(For English speakers: strooi sounds an awful lot like “straw”, which is what makes it so satisfying.)
Note that I used the word “probably”. Of course I did. We don’t have a time machine to go back, and so we can never know for certain where any word comes from.
A lady tells me that I am wrong
A lady responded to tell me I was wrong and that the “straw” in “strawberries” comes from the fact that straw is used to prevent the berries from touching the ground and rotting.
I asked her for her source, and she came back with … Gardeners’ World.
Ah, yes, of course, Gardeners’ World. Known to be such a dependable source for linguistics and etymology.
I explained my answer in a little more detail, adding that the “strewn” theory was the most likely theory according to many etymologists, but that there are other theories. For example, that the little seeds look a bit like straw, that the plant likes to grow in hay-fields, or simply that the plant itself looks a bit straw-like with those long stalks with the berries at the end.
Strawberries come from North America?
She answered, “This all sounds very unlikely if you ask me. Strawberries come from North America. Plus the word “strewn” has nothing to do with strawberries.”
I ignored the second part of her argument, which is akin to saying “the sky is purple because I say so,” but was completely baffled by the first part. Strawberries come from North America???
You have to understand, by this time I knew enough about the word “strawberry” to know it was really old. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the oldest instance of the word “strawberry” that we have in writing is from 1328. The image above is from the 1460s.
When did Europeans discover America again? Oh yes. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
I was utterly confused and once again asked for her source, to which she said, “wiki”.
I duly looked it up and found out that she was right, kinda. The modern strawberry, the fat juicy red fruit that we know and love today, is a mix of a plant from North America and another from Chile that was cultivated in France in the 1750s.
Why the “straw” in “strawberry” does not refer to the straw you put underneath while it grows
Our word “strawberry” originally didn’t refer to the modern garden strawberry plant at all, which has only existed since the 1750s. Instead, it refers to the woodland strawberry, a plant with much smaller fruits which grow higher up. A plant which does not need a straw bedding to prevent its fruit from rotting.
I cannot tell you how nice it feels to be proven right by an argument that was intended to prove you wrong. So thank you to that lady on Threads 🙂
Epilogue
By now, I have spent a lot of time on the internet looking at the etymology of strawberry, and I have seen that the “bedding of straw” theory has a lot of fierce proponents, especially on social media.
And I totally get it. If you grow strawberries yourself, or have been strawberry picking, you will have seen all this straw spread out underneath the plants and you will have thought “oh, that’s why they are called strawberries!”. It is an aha-moment that is hard to dislodge, especially, I can imagine, if you work for Gardeners’ World.
Second epilogue
I didn’t dive deeply into the sources for my argument on Threads, but for this article, of course, I did. I downloaded William Sayers’ 2009 article and found that it made my whole journey above superfluous. Read your sources, Heddwen!
I’ll let Mr Sayers have the last word:
“In short, the Old English name would have referred to the Woodland Strawberry, fragaria vesca (also known as the Wild, European, or Alpine strawberry). Modern cultivation techniques such as mulching with straw are unlikely to have been practiced in the medieval period, always assuming that some plants were transferred from the wild to gardens. The relative size and weight of the wild berries, entailing that they were unlikely to be in contact with the earth, would also make straw superfluous.”
Edit: the first version of this article noted that another exception to the “earth-berry” trend was Swedish, which uses the word smultron, which is of unknown origin. However, I have now learned that smultron is the name for the woodland strawberry, and the Swedish word for the strawberries you buy in the supermarket is jordgubbar, which means something like “earth-lump”, though apparently the gubbar part has lost its “lump” meaning and now means “old man”. In other words, the Swedes have their whole own strawberry-linguistics thing going on, and I’m just not going to comment!
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Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
For Dutch speakers, there is a special kind of pleasure to be had when they can spot a Dutch artefact in the background of an American film or computer game. Whether the creators meant them as official “Easter Eggs”, or whether it was just a coincidence, here are a few times when some tiny bit of Dutchness crept into international media!
I have only been able to find four of these Easter Eggs so far, but I am sure there are many more. Have you ever noticed a bit of Dutchness (or Flemishness!) in the background of a movie, series, game, or other type of media? Let me know!!
(Note: Of course, some films and series have an explicit Dutch theme. The Fault in Our Stars, for example, is set partly in Amsterdam. In Friends, bartender Gunther was supposed to be Dutch. Ted Lasso features a romance with a Dutchman on a houseboat. This article is meant for the unmentioned, secret little nods to the Netherlands and Flanders.)
Rien Poortvliet in “The Big Bang Theory”
A scene in a book shop in the popular comedy series Big Bang Theory has the 1976 Dutch classic Gnomes (Leven en werken van de kabouter) in the background. This book, illustrated by Rien Poortvliet, was a huge international success when it came out. A nerd-book avant la lettre, the book illustrates the life and habitat of gnomes much like a serious biology book would. Anyone who knows the themes and humour of The Big Bang Theory will agree with me that the book’s placement is probably not a coincidence.
The major 2016 motion picture Arrival, about aliens coming to Earth and the linguists tasked with finding a way to communicate with them, was a joy to watch for professional linguists all over the world due to its many accurate elements about the daily work in the field of linguistics.
One such element is the fact that scientists in the background can be seen working with the software Praat, which is used for the analysis of speech sounds.
This open-source software was developed at the University of Amsterdam by two Dutch academics and has been going strong as the software of choice for linguists the world over since 1995.
Febo in Mass Effect
The popular 2007 video game Mass Effect, set far in the future, included images of a futuristic Febo; the Dutch fast-food restaurant where customers can famously put a coin in a slot to take a hamburger, kroket or bamischijf “out of the wall”.
Contributors on Reddit theorise that a Dutch developer must have added this Easter egg. Apparently later versions of the game no longer have it, because the image had not been cleared with Febo.
Dutch Nee/Ja stickers in Sleeping Dogs
It’s a little tricky to see in this picture, but the letterboxes in the scene above have Dutch stickers on them alerting deliverers to the fact that the owner of the letterbox does not want any unaddressed junk mail. These stickers are ubiquitous in the Netherlands and very recognisable.
A Redditor noticed this in the 2012 computer game Sleeping Dogs, and the consensus seems to be that there must have been some stock photos of Dutch scenes in the media packages that game designers use to build so-called “textures” (3D backgrounds in computer games).
In the same thread, another Redditor noted that some of the roads in a game called C&C Generals looked like this:
These were all the Easter Eggs I was able to find so far. If you know of any more, let me know in the comments or on social media!
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Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
In January 2025, American broadcasting company Fox started airing a sitcom called “Going Dutch” about an American colonel who is reassigned to lead a small military base in the Netherlands as punishment. (Punishment for him, not for the Dutch. Though I guess its debatable.) The sitcom was renewed for a second season which aired from January 2026.
I write about all the ways the Dutch and the English language overlap and interact, and have a special interest in how Dutch-speaking culture is represented in English-speaking media. That meant that when I learned about the existence of this series, there was nothing for it: I had to sit myself down and watch the whole thing.
Did the writers just know nothing about Dutch culture?
Watching this series as a Dutch speaker, the cultural inaccuracies washed over me right from episode one. At first, I assumed there was a lack of knowledge and/or fact-checking on the part of the writers, but as I kept watching, I realised most inaccuracies had been chosen for comedic effect. Every now and then there would be a nod to Dutch culture that told me at least one of the writers knows more than a little about the Netherlands. They just didn’t have “culturally accurate” as their goal, here. The goal was to be funny.
All the things the series “Going Dutch” gets wrong about Dutch culture
8) A Dutch village wouldn’t be called Stroopsdorf
The American army base that is home to all the high jinks in this series is located in a fictional village called Stroopsdorf. “Dorf” is German, not Dutch. Had the writers chosen to call the village “Stroopsdorp” it would have actually been quite a good funny hypothetical Dutch village name. But that “f” at the end ruins the whole thing.
7) The Dutch accent doesn’t sound like that
Neither of the two Dutch main characters are played by Dutch actors, and the accents are appalling.
Arnmundur Ernst Björnsson plays Jan, a stereotypically flamboyant gay character (except it later turns out he has two female partners – polyamory apparently being a safer Dutch trope for Fox than homosexuality) who is on the base as a translator. Björnsson is an Icelandic actor who is putting on what sounds to me like a parody of a WWII-era German accent.
(He gets called Ziggy Stardutch in one episode which I did think was funny.)
Catherine Tate, the redhead from Doctor Who (not that one, the other one), plays Dr Katja Vanderhoff who owns (hahaha, so funny) the local brothel, and is the colonel’s love interest in season 1. I love Tate as an actress, but her accent goes from the Scandinavian chef from the Muppets to Irish and back again. Every now and then she hits on a sentence that actually sounds a little Dutch. But not often.
6) The game of korfbal does not feature a teenager playing a traditional Swiss (?) mountain horn to signal start and half-time.
No comment.
5) There couldn’t be possums in the air tower
One of the recurring jokes in the first season is that there are possums squatting in the air tower – except there couldn’t be, because possums do not live in Europe. Like, at all.
4) There aren’t that many tulips around
In the series, there are tulips everywhere. Giant tulip statues on the grounds. Tulips on the tables in every eatery. Tulip posters, tulip paintings. Granted, in touristy areas in the Netherlands you will see a lot of tulip imagery, but a random army base does not need to appeal to any tourist, and so apart from a few tulips in the flower beds in spring, you really wouldn’t see them in such abundance.
3) The Netherlands does not look like a cute Irish village
For unknown reasons (cough, tax breaks, cough) this show was recorded in Ireland. That means that when we get a look at “downtown Stroopsdorf” for the very first time in Episode 6 Season 2 it looks so much like a charming Irish village that you can almost hear the tin whistle music drifting through the streets.
2) There are no shops called “voorwerpen”
They changed some shop fronts to make them seem Dutch. I just love the gift shop called “voorwerpen”.
“Voorwerpen” means “objects” and though it could totally be the title of an avant-garde art show about everyday items, it is not a very marketable name for a shop.
1) And finally: no, we do not live in fear of Belgian separatists.
For the plot of episode 4 in season 2 to work, they needed a character who would be seen by the audience as a bad guy straight away and with little explanation. A terrorist.
So they went with… a Belgian seperatist.
In the episode, Belgian separatists are protesting in Stroopsdorf, which is in the Netherlands, in French, because they want to establish their own country. One of them has particularly nefarious intentions; he plans to plant a bomb! (Oh no!)
Where to start?! Belgium, of course, already is its own country. They did have to fight a war against the Dutch, to be fair, but this was 1830 to 1839 and is pretty much water under the bridge by now.
The French speakers in Belgium are Walloons, and though I am sure there are a few out there who would like Wallonia to be its own country, this is very much a fringe view, and there is definitely no terrorism involved.
Also, the hypothetical Walloon seperatists in question would go and protest and be nefarious in Brussels, you know, what with that being the capital of Belgium, and not in a small random village in the Netherlands. It’s as if Colorado would go and fight for its independence in the Canadian town of Baie-Saint-Paul.
There were a few things it got right, too
7) Yes, there are a lot of bicycles everywhere
The series goes out of its way to make sure there are people cycling around in every outdoor scene, and bicycles parked on every street corner. This, I would say, is accurate.
6) Yes, korfbal is a thing
Korfbal is an existing Dutch game that is played mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium but also in the rest of the world. As the episode portrays, it is indeed co-ed, with men and women playing together, and it is quite close to being basketball but with round wicker circle-baskets instead of nets.
5) Yes, our KitKats are better
In Season 1 episode 5 a character says: “In the Netherlands the biggest threat to the United States is how much better their KitKat is.” This is true! It’s a different recipe, way more chocolaty!
4) Yes, we’re pretty direct
In season 1, episode 7, Katja, the main character’s Dutch girlfriend, tells his adult daughter she doesn’t like her, and explains exactly why. This is in keeping with a stereotype about the Dutch that has a good basis in truth: Dutch people are very direct and they say what they mean.
3) Yes, at Christmas, many families do put raw ingredients on the table and expect guests to cook it themselves in teeny little pans
For Katja’s Christmas party they do gourmetten, a tradition where an electric grill is placed on the table and you get little pans to fry your own food, which is provided raw. This really is a thing in the Netherlands, and I completely agree with the main character who thought it was quite stupid.
2) Yes, our labour laws are pretty protective of employees
In season 1, episode 8, the colonel finds out that it is very difficult to fire someone in the Netherlands, they need to have transgressed three times and even then you need to hire a mediator. I don’t think this is true for all companies, but I do believe it is true for civil servants.
And yes, Dutch people get unlimited sick days. (How could you not? If I have a high fever, I can’t come to work, no matter if it is my 5th or 50th sick day, no?)
1) A Dutch person gets played by a Dutch actor two whole times
In the whole of the two seasons, there are two Dutch bit parts that actually get played by Dutch actors. In episode 9 of season 1, Maud, a laundry assistant who attracts two romantic rivals, is played by Dutch/French actress Anaïs van der Werff, and in episode 10 of season 2 Jan’s uncle Dietrich is played by Dutch/Canadian actor Walter van Dyk. Each of them gets about three lines, but they are three correct lines. Hurrah!
Things that “Going Dutch” got right. -ish.
6) The first day of herring season is not a national holiday, but it is celebrated in Scheveningen
Vlaggetjesdag is celebrated in Scheveningen on 22 June, when the first fresh herrings come in. It is, alas, not a day when all of the Netherlands stops working, as suggested in Season 1, Episode 9.
5) There is no Dutch village that celebrates “second Christmas”, but at least the backstory is based in truth
Season 1 Episode 7 features a Dutch Christmas in spring, which the writers cleverly decided would be a local Stroopsdorf tradition, rather than a national one, even giving it a backstory based in kinda, sorta reality.
The fictional explanation has it that Stroopsdorf couldn’t celebrate Christmas in 1944 because of the war, so decided to celebrate Christmas after they were liberated in spring, and then the tradition of having a second Christmas lived on.
Though there are no places in the Netherlands where this is an actual tradition, it is at least true that most families were indeed forced to skip Christmas during the last war winter in the Netherlands. “Skip” sounds a bit too innocent, though; it was known as the Hunger Winter and many people died of starvation.
The Netherlands was then liberated on 5 May 1945, which is indeed spring, though of course people would have had other things on their minds than celebrating Christmas. Also, though the allied troops brought food, I don’t think a Christmas banquet was on the cards immediately after Hitler popped his clogs.
In this Christmas episode, our main Dutch character Jan, still played with an excruciating accent by an Icelandic actor, dresses up like Sinterklaas, whose costume they get right. He explains that Sinterklaas puts candy in little children’s boots (yes, correct) and travels from Madrid in a boat full of oranges?!? Well, two out of three, I suppose.
4) During WWII, Dutch children did run errands for food. I don’t think they laid mines, though.
It’s a throw-away joke, but in season 2 episode 10 Jan’s uncle Dietrich admits to having placed mines for German soldiers in return for chocolate. (It’s funny because it makes him a nazi, haha). Though chocolate was nowhere to be found during the war (the allied soldiers famously gave kids chocolate after the liberation), and laying mines seems very extreme, children probably did run errands for the Germans in return for food. Because, you know, they were hungry.
3) The printed Dutch is at least tolerable
Every now and then an episode will feature a poster or a pamphlet or something in Dutch. The translations are very literal and have clearly been generated by a machine. Sometimes there seems to be an extra vowel, which I think is probably intentional, because those double vowels make our language look extra foreign to English speakers. But at least is isn’t just gibberish, we have to give them that.
an extra e in “leelijke”, on purpose perhaps, to make it look more Dutch?
2) Catherine Tate does a passable job speaking Dutch
In Season 2, episode 2 we hear a few Dutch sentences for the first time; before that it was just the odd Dutch word. Catherine Tate seems to have actually done some homework and does an okay job. Yay!
1) Niksen is a thing, but you don’t get together to do it, because then it wouldn’t be niksen
Season 1, episode 8 starts with Dutch civilians lazing about on the army base’s grounds, cycling, playing hacky-sack, doing yoga. “It is the Dutch art form of niksen, the art of doing nothing” a character explains.
Niksen is a thing, though one of those things that is more a thing when explaining it to foreigners than that it is actually a thing.
The extras in the episode were doing it wrong, though – doing yoga and cycling is definitely not “niksen“, because they are not doing nothing, they are cycling and doing yoga. Duh.
Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
As someone who writes professionally about the Dutch language in English, I’m pretty versed in Dutch proverbs. So when I see someone quoting a “Dutch proverb” that isn’t actually a Dutch proverb, I’m always curious: how and why did this come about?
This time, my journey started at Vogue.com, where journalist Emma Specter gleefully announces that there’s a biopic coming out about American TV personality Martha Stewart starring Cate Blanchett. She mentions:
“I can only pray that it will share at least some DNA with Martha, R.J. Cutler’s 2024 documentary …in which Stewart… hits us with this iconic Dutch proverb: “If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk. If you want to be happy for a year, get married. But if you want to be happy forever, plant a garden.”
Specter probably got it from her colleague Lilah Ramzi, who quotes the same version of this proverb in Vogue in October 2024.
Did Martha Stewart really say this?
Yes, though she says it slightly differently:
“If you want to be happy for a year, get married. If you want to be happy for a decade, get a dog. If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make a garden.“
(I prefer this version, if I’m honest. Dogs are funnier than alcohol!)
I found this article that links to the clip on TikTok and provides this helpful meme from the documentary.
Importantly, the clip makes clear that it was not Martha Stewart herself who named it as Dutch, but Vogue. In the clip, Stewart just says “there’s a little saying that I like”.
Would Stewart have used a Dutch proverb?
According to Wikipedia, Martha Stewart is of Polish descent, not Dutch, and I see no links to the Netherlands or Flanders of any other kind in her biography. No Dutch husbands or anything like that. So she would not have had a stock of Dutch proverbs from e.g. her grandparents to trot out.
Did Vogue just invent that it was Dutch, then?
No, I think they must have found a source on the internet saying it was Dutch. I found this quote on GoodReads from 2016, for example:
“The Dutch have a proverb for it: “If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk. If you want to be happy for a year, get married. But if you want to be happy for a lifetime, plant a garden.”
(GoodReads, you should date your posts!! I’m assuming this post was from 2016, because that is when it got its first like.)
According to the American Rhododendron Society (which understandably might like quoting proverbs about gardening every now and then) the proverb is Chinese, and actually goes like this:
If you want to be happy for an hour, get drunk. If you want to be happy for a day, get married. If you want to be happy for a week, kill your pig and eat it. If you want to be happy all your life, BE A GARDENER!
But there are all kinds of versions on the internet, for example, this one from 2018 on Facebook (which makes more sense than the Rhododendron Society one)
If you would be happy for a day, get drunk. If you would be happy for a week, roast a pig. If you would be happy for a year, get married. If you would be happy for a lifetime, plant a garden.
What they have in common is that they all tend to note that it is a Chinese proverb.
The only exception to this rule is on a few quotation websites with a quote that they attribute to British comedian Arthur Smith:
If you want to be happy for a short time, get drunk; happy for a long time, fall in love; happy forever, take up gardening.
Conclusion (for now): it’s probably Chinese
As I know for certain that it isn’t Dutch, and I feel like Arthur Smith was probably quoting an existing proverb just like Martha Stewart was, I think the Chinese proverb origin theory sounds the most likely.
However, I have not been able to find any reputable sources with conclusive evidence, nor have I been able to find the original version of the proverb. Was the pig in the original, for example, or is that just a fanciful addition? If someone with knowledge of Chinese is reading this, please let me know in the comments!
Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
Okay, it doesn’t matter to the plot very much, but Dutch speakers don’t often get a character that represents them, so it is a shame that the Dutch character of Eva Stratt (European Space Agency administrator and boss lady) was changed into a German for the movie Project Hail Mary.
To be fair, “Stratt” was always more of a German name, and it seems perhaps author Andy Weir made a research mistake when he named her. (Though there are plenty of Dutch people with German names, like author Herman Koch and historian Philip Dröge. So perhaps she was one of those.)
Another “to be fair”: actor Sandra Hüller did a phenomenal job and seemed just right for the part, bringing humanity in just the right dosage. Well done her.
But since I write a newsletter about (among other things) how Dutch speakers are represented in English-speaking media, this is worth a mention to me. In the book, Eva Stratt is Dutch. In the movie, she is German. Now you know.
Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
Here is something many non-English speakers learned at school:
When you meet a person from the UK, that person will say, “How do you do?” and instead of answering the question, you are expected to answer “How do you do?”.
As a Brit, I can tell you: this is, like, 100 years out of date. Don’t do it.
However, I recently learned that modern Australian English does something very similar. They say “How ya goin’?” And the answer is, you guessed it, “How ya goin’?”
And when I posted this on social media, an American let me know that the answer to “What’s up?” is “What’s up?”, a southern American remarked that the answer to “Howdy!” was “Howdy!” and a Brit said the answer to “You alright?” is “You alright?”
The Anglo-Saxon tradition of completely ignoring questions lives on!
No link with houdoe
I once read that to the “how do you do?”- sayers of yore, “how do you do?” wasn’t a question, but a synonym of “nice to meet you” or “nice to see you again”. So, to them, there was no question that was not being answered. I guess it’s the same for Australians. Readers in Australia: let me know!
“How do you do?” can still be seen in the American greeting “Howdie”. It can NOT be seen in the Noord-Brabant parting phrase “houdoe”, however plausible the story that it was taken over from the Second World War liberators. It simply comes from Houdt oe eigen goed, which means “Keep yourself well”.
So, what should you say?
In general, when greeting someone in Britain, you are expected to say “How are you?”. And you are expected to answer “Good, how are you?” or “Fine, how are you?”
On no account are you expected to actually give the other person details on how you are, or tell them that you aren’t doing so well!
(An exception would be something like your mother’s funeral, in which case you are permitted, just, to say something like “You know, hanging in there. How are you?”)
Social media responses
Here are some interesting responses I got when I posted this on social media:
An Australian said about the phrase “How ya going?”
We are super-efficient, reducing a 5-syllable expression to 2*: “Air Gaan”.
Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
The Dutch name Freek (pronounced “Frake”, more or less) is not as common as, say, Jan or Willem or Bart but is still a perfectly normal name in the Netherlands and Belgium.
How many Freeks are there?
How many Freeks have been around in the past is difficult to say, because if you were called “Freek” by your family, you were probably registered in the national birth register as Frederik. Many other Dutch Frederiks went by “Fred”, and some might have gone by “Rik”, so it is very difficult to say how many Freeks were among them.
From the 1980s it became popular to call your son Freek without making him Frederik in his passport, so from that point on we can see them in the national statistics. The name was quite popular in the 1980s and 1990s, making many Freeks around 40 years old.
(Take “popular” with a grain of salt, though; even at the height of its popularity, in the year 1984, the name “Freek” was not even in the top 100 of boys’ names.)
But again, don’t be fooled by that 0-line in the graph: there were plenty of Freeks around before the 1980s, it’s just that for these statistics, they were called Frederik.
Nowadays the name is less popular, though in 2025 there were still 35 baby boys who got the name Freek. I think part of the diminishing popularity has to do with parents wanting to give their child a name that will not raise eyebrows abroad, but another part will quite simply be the normal ebb and flow of name popularity.
Freeks have been around a long time
Though we cannot know how many Freeks used to live in Dutch-speaking parts, something we can know is that Freeks have been around a long time. The picture below is from a baptism register from 1634. On 2 November 1634, the following children were baptised: Claas, Trijn, Jan, Freek, Gerrit and Jannekijntje (?? I can’t make out that last one, tell me what you think it says!). This image is from the amazing website wiewaswie.nl, and the oldest Freek I can find was buried in 1586. They were probably around before that, too, it’s just that we don’t have records that go further back.
Celebrities with the name Freek
Freek de Jonge: (1944, Dutch comedian)
Here he is, speaking in English (and not being funny, for a change).
(I was a little hesitant to include Freek Rikkerink in the picture above, and in this list, as he has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. However, Suzan & Freek are still making and promoting their music, choosing to continue their passion and sharing themselves with the world. From what I know of them, I think they would be sad to be left out!)
How do Freeks introduce themselves abroad?
Though some embrace the way foreigners call them “Freak”, many also opt to go by Frederik, Fred or Frake.
Is your name Freek? What do you do abroad? Let me know!
What do Freeks think about the Freak connotation?
In this paragraph, I will paste some reactions that I think I will get on social media.
Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
From the super-reliable sounding Facebook group “History Cool Kids”
In 1672, during a major crisis in the Netherlands, a mob captured and executed the former leading statesman Johan de Witt (who was effectively serving as prime minister). He was then partially eaten by the mob.
Under his leadership, though not because of his personal failures, the Dutch Republic was attacked simultaneously by England, France, and the German states of Prince-Bishopric of Münster and Electorate of Cologne during the Franco Dutch War. Although the Dutch ultimately survived the invasion, the year became known as the Disaster Year because of the scale of military and political collapse.
The violence was also tied to internal political rivalry, and some contemporaries and later historians have suspected the influence of William III of England, then Prince of Orange, who benefited politically from the crisis and rose to power as stadtholder before later invading England in 1688 and becoming king.
The aftermath was famously depicted in a painting by Jan de Baen, and many Dutch historians still regard Johan de Witt as one of the greatest statesmen in the country’s history, which makes the episode especially tragic.
And you can apparently see his tongue and finger in The Hague:
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horseshit: “Serious harassment or abuse”; “Blatant nonsense, more likely stemming from ignorance than any intent to deceive”
He thinks vinegar is alkaline? Don’t you realize that’s horseshit?
Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
