Find out how popular the last name Coetzee is in the United States and learn more about the meaning, history, and race and ethnic origin of people in America who are named Coetzee.

Coetzee, like all of the last names we have data for, is identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a surname which has more than 100 occurrences in the United States in the Decennial Census survey. The most recent statistics we have for the Coetzee surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Coetzee in America

Coetzee is the 64388th most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Coetzee surname appeared 309 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0 people would have the surname Coetzee.

We can also compare 2010 data for Coetzee to data from the previous census in 2000. The table below contains all of the statistics for both years in a side-by-side comparison.

The history of the last name Coetzee

The surname Coetzee has its origins in South Africa, tracing back to the 17th century Dutch settlers. It is a patronymic name derived from the Afrikaans masculine given name Coetzee, which is a diminutive form of the Dutch name Coert or Coert-Jan, itself a contraction of the names Conraad and Jan.

Coetzee is a common surname among the Afrikaner population of South Africa, particularly in the Western Cape province. The earliest recorded instances of the name can be found in Dutch East India Company records from the late 1600s, when the Dutch established a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope.

One of the earliest known bearers of the surname was Jacobus Coetzee, a farmer and landowner who lived in the Stellenbosch region in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Another notable early figure was Dirk Coetzee, a Dutch Reformed Church minister who served in the Cape Colony in the late 1700s.

During the Great Trek of the 1830s and 1840s, when many Afrikaners migrated eastward from the Cape Colony, the Coetzee surname spread to other parts of what is now South Africa. Some prominent individuals bearing the name include the following:

1. J.M. Coetzee (born 1940), a Nobel Prize-winning novelist and academic, widely regarded as one of the greatest living writers in the English language.

2. Dirk Coetzee (1945-2013), a former security officer who became a whistleblower against the apartheid government's covert operations in the 1980s.

3. Albertus Coetzee (1877-1949), a South African politician and lawyer who served as Minister of Justice and Minister of Labour.

4. Fanie Coetzee (born 1941), a former South African rugby union player who played as a fly-half for the national team.

5. Steve Coetzee (born 1979), a former professional cricketer who played for the South African national team as a left-arm fast bowler.

While the surname Coetzee is most prevalent in South Africa, it can also be found among communities of South African descent in other parts of the world, such as Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Coetzee

We also have some data on the ancestry of people with the surname Coetzee.

The below race categories are the modified race categories used in the Census Bureau's population estimates program. All people were categorized into six mutually exclusive racial and Hispanic origin groups:

1. White only
2. Black only
3. American Indian and Alaskan Native only
4. Asian and Pacific Islander only
5. Hispanic
6. Two or More Races

For the most recent 2010 census data, the race/ethnic origin breakdown for Coetzee was:

Note: Any fields showing (S) means the data was suppressed for privacy so that the data does not in any way identify any specific individuals.

Since we have data from the previous census in 2000, we can also compare the values to see how the popularity of Coetzee has changed in the 10 years between the two census surveys.

Data source

The last name data and ethnic breakdown of last names is sourced directly from the Decennial Census survey, conducted every 10 years by the United States Census Bureau.

The history and meaning of the name Coetzee was researched and written by our team of onomatology and genealogy experts.

If you have a correction or suggestion to improve the history of Coetzee, please contact us.

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