van

Van is a very common prefix in Dutch language surnames, where it is known as a . In those cases it nearly always refers to a certain, often quite distant, ancestor's place of origin or residence; for example, Ludwig van Beethoven "from Bettenhoven" and Rembrandt van Rijn "from the Rhine". Van is also a preposition in the Dutch and Afrikaans languages, meaning "of" or "from" depending on the context (similar to da, de and di in the Romance languages). In surnames, it can appear by itself or in combination with an article (compare French de la, du, de l). The most common cases of this are van de, van der and van den, where the articles are all current or archaic forms of the article de "the". Less common are van het and van 't, which use the similar but grammatically neuter article het. The contraction ver-, based on van der''', is also common and can be written as a single word with the rest of the surname; an example being Johannes Vermeer (van der meer "of the lake"). Spelling conventions Collation and capitalisation Collation and capitalisation of names differs between countries. In the Netherlands and Suriname, names starting with "van" are filed under the initial letter of the following name proper, so Johannes van der Waals is filed under "W", as: "Waals, Johannes van der" or "van der Waals, Johannes". The "v" is written in lower case, except when the surname is used as standalone (when the first name or initials are omitted), in which case it is capitalised, as in "de schilder Vincent van Gogh" and "de schilder Van Gogh ("the painter Van Gogh"). In compound terms like "de Van Goghtentoonstelling ("the Van Gogh exhibition") the "v" is capitalised, unless the connection between the person and the concept is or has become very weak. In Belgium, any surnames beginning with "Van" or "van" are filed under "V". So for example Eric Van Rompuy is listed under the "V" section, not under the "R". The lowercase spelling in a name from the Netherlands is respected but not necessarily differentiated in alphabetical ordering and its Dutch style capitalisation for certain usages is generally unknown and thus not followed. The painter's full name, however, having become commonplace, is usually spelled Vincent Van Gogh in Belgium. In Flemish surnames the "V" is always capitalised though a following interjected "de", "den" ('the') or "der" ('of the', 'from the') usually stays lowercase.