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| Beijen or Beyen? |
Two dotsSome people write their name as Beijen, others as Beyen. In the Netherlands, the official name is determined by the birth certificate. Previously these certificates were handwritten, and the difference between Beijen and Beyen was not more than two dots. The pictures at the right are from two birth certificates that were drawn up in 1853 and 1861 in Utrecht. The first town clerk did not write dots in the name of the father of het child, the second one did. Strictly speaking the first child had the surname Beyen and the second child the surname Beijen. We may suppose that this was a matter of indifference to the people concerned.
In later years typewriters and computers were used. Therefore, the difference is now much more visible. The spelling of the surname gives no indication to which of the families Beijen or Beyen one belongs. The next overviews can illustrate this. Personal Record Cards and Personal Record ListsThe official names of the inhabitants of the Netherlands are set down in the official population registration. The data of people who are living now are not public, but the data about deceased persons may be asked for.Since 1939 the Dutch municipalities have used Personal Record Cards to register information on every inhabitant. In 1994 these cards were replaced by digitalized Personal Record Lists. I have obtained copies of the record cards or record lists of all members of the Beijen or Beyen families who have died in the Netherlands between 1939 and 2023. These people can be split over the four families as follows:
This shows that according to the official population registration in all these families and branches the name Beijen is far more numerous than the name Beyen.
Private registrationsThere are also registrations for which people can state their name themselves. They don't always use the name by which they are registered in the official registrations.One of these lists is the telephone directory. In March 2008 the Dutch telephone directory on the internet stated (after removal of some duplicates) 121 people as Beijen and 23 as Beyen. They can be divided over the families and branches as follows:
On http://www.schoolbank.nl/, the leading Dutch site for finding old school friends, many members of the Beijen and Beyen families can be found as well. In March 2008 it included in total 101 entries, 14 of which were double. Among the remaining 87 people 85 had registered themselves as Beijen and 2 as Beyen. The distribution over the families and branches is as follows:
In March 2008 in total 103 members of the Beijen and Beyen families were registered on the Dutch social networking site Hyves. 99 of them used the name Beijen and 4 the name Beyen:
A shift from Beyen to BeijenIn the telephone directory the name Beyen comprises 16 % of the total, whereas it is much lower on Schoolbank and Hyves: 2 and 4 %, respectively. This is probably an indication for a general tendency. The names in the telephone directory are written as they were noted down when a person had his first telephone connection. For many people that was decades ago. The names on Schoolbank and Hyves have been submitted not more than a few years ago.Obviously the use of ij in the name Beijen/Beyen is nowadays even more popular than before. An extra indication for this is the fact that several people who have been listed in the telephone directory for many years as Beyen, are listed on Schoolbank and/or Hyves as Beijen. The names Beijen and Beyen on this websiteOn this site I try to follow as much as possible the preference of the people concerned. A careful study of the photo gallery, for instance, shows that in several cases within a group of siblings the names Beijen and Beyen are both used.For brevity's sake only the name Beijen is used on some other pages of this site. In that cases the other spelling is meant as well.
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