Got a great-grandmother named Sjoerdtje, or a surname that ends in -stra, -sma oder -inga? Then your family probably came from Friesland, the northern Dutch province with its own language. Thousands of Frisians left for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and their descendants often know little more than a name. Here is how you find the rest.
Step 1Know about 1811
Before 1811 most Frisians had no fixed family name. People used patronymics: Sjoerd, the son of Jan, was Sjoerd Jans, and his son Jan became Jan Sjoerds. The surname changed every generation. When Napoleon ruled the Netherlands, a decree forced every family to register a fixed surname, and most Frisians did so in 1811 and 1812. The registers of those name adoptions survive, and they are the bridge between the old patronymics and the surname you carry today.
So if your trail goes cold around 1811, that is normal. Look for the name-adoption register first, then switch to patronymics for anything older. Our articles on Frisian surnames und what the name endings mean explain the naming system in more detail.
Step 2Search the free Frisian archives
Friesland has some of the best digitised records in Europe, and most of them cost nothing to search:
- AlleFriezen: births, marriages and deaths from Frisian civil registration (from 1811 onward), plus older records. Start here.
- Tresoar: the Frisian archive in Leeuwarden, home of the provincial records and the name-adoption registers.
- Open Archives: searches many Dutch archives at once, useful when your family moved out of Friesland.
- WieWasWie: another national search across Dutch archives.
- FamilySearch: free, with Dutch church and civil records and good emigration coverage on the American side.
The records are in Dutch, but you only need a handful of words: geboorte (birth), huwelijk (marriage), overlijden (death), Vader und Moeder. Search with and without the surname ending, and try spelling variants: clerks wrote down what they heard.
Step 3Follow the emigrants
Most Frisian emigrants left in two waves. In the late 1800s, farm workers and their families went to the American Midwest, with large groups settling in Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and New Jersey. After the Second World War, a second wave went mostly to Canada and Australia. Passenger lists, naturalisation papers and church records on the new side often name the exact village in Friesland, and that village is the key that unlocks the Dutch archives. Read more in how Frisians ended up everywhere.
Step 4Let DNA find the cousins you do not know about
Paper records stop where the documents stop. A DNA test does something archives cannot: it matches you with living relatives who have tested too, including distant cousins in Friesland who may already have built the family tree you are looking for. Families from small Frisian villages often show up as clusters of matches, which helps you pin down the right village.
Tip: MyHeritage is popular with Dutch and European testers, which raises your chance of matching relatives who stayed in Friesland. Its family-tree tools also flag records and trees that mention your ancestors.
Step 5Learn a few words of the language they spoke
Your ancestors probably spoke Frisian at home and Dutch in church and at school. Learning even a little Frisian makes old letters, gravestones and village names suddenly readable, and Frisian is one of the closest relatives of English, so it comes quicker than you expect. Our Freier Friesischer Kurs takes you from zero to your first sentences, with audio from native speakers.
Want to talk with a native speaker? italki has a native Frisian tutor who gives one-on-one video lessons, with trial lessons from about USD 10. A good way to read a family letter together or practise the greetings before a trip to Friesland.
LearnFrisian is a free project of Stichting De Fryske Wrâld. Some links on this page are affiliate links: if you buy through them, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, and it helps keep our Frisian lessons free.
