๐ How Rare Are You in Netherlands?
๐ณ๐ฑ Genetic Landscape of Netherlands
The Dutch are famous for being the tallest people on Earth, with average male height of 183cm. This is partly genetic and partly nutritional โ the Netherlands experienced a 20cm height increase in just 150 years. Genetically, the Dutch are Northern European with Frisian, Saxon, and Frankish roots. The exceptionally high rate of blue eyes (60%) and blonde hair makes these 'common' traits in the Netherlands, while brown eyes are the rare ones. The Dutch also have one of Europe's highest rates of natural red hair.
Geography here is largely man-made, and that shapes who ends up living where. Villages behind their own dikes stayed inward-looking for generations: Urk was a fishing island until the Zuiderzee works joined it to the mainland, and a handful of surnames still cover much of the town. The newest province, Flevoland, was seabed within living memory, and its towns were laid out on drawing boards and settled by families recruited from every corner of the country. Frisian first names such as Sjoerd and Wytske still cluster in the north. Surnames carry their own history โ when registration was imposed in 1811, some families are said to have chosen absurd names on the assumption the occupation would not last, and their descendants still answer to them.
๐ Nobody Measured That Height โ People Reported It
The height figure on a page like this usually arrives with no address. This one has one. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) publishes table 81565NED, drawn from its Gezondheidsenquรชte, which CBS describes as a continuous survey of the Dutch population living in private households. The height topic there is called โOpgegeven lengte, 20 jaar of ouderโ, and CBS defines it as โhet gemiddelde van de eigen opgave van de lengte van de respondenten van 20 jaar of ouder in cm zonder schoenenโ โ the average of what respondents said their own height was, in centimetres, without shoes. CBS states plainly that the height and weight figures are based on self-reported values. Nobody in that series was measured.
The series is long enough to show its own shape. For men aged 20 and over, CBS records 177.3 cm in 1981, 180.4 cm in 2000 and 181.4 cm in 2025 โ about 3.1 cm across the first nineteen years and about 1.0 cm across the next twenty-five. CBS attaches a caution to a span that long: the Gezondheidsenquรชte changed substantially between 2013 and 2014, which produced method breaks, so CBS asks for care when comparing results from 2014 onward with results up to and including 2013. The table is public, it runs to 2025, and every number in this paragraph came out of it.
๐๏ธ Eye Color
| Blue | 60% |
| Green | 10% |
| Gray | 8% |
| Hazel | 12% |
| Brown | 10% |
๐ Hair Color
| Blonde | 30% |
| Brown | 28% |
| Dark Brown | 22% |
| Red | 5% |
| Black | 8% |
| Gray | 7% |
๐ฉธ Blood Type
| O+ | 37% |
| A+ | 33% |
| B+ | 8% |
| AB+ | 3% |
| O- | 8% |
| A- | 7% |
| B- | 2% |
| AB- | 2% |
Trait frequencies on this page come from public and institutional datasets โ see Data Sources.
🧮 Calculate Your Rarity in Netherlands
Pick your eye colour, hair colour and blood type. The calculator uses Netherlands's own figures from the tables above, not world averages.
This is an estimate, not a measurement. It multiplies three national frequencies as if they were independent, and they are not: eye and hair colour share pigmentation genes, so a combination that tends to run together, such as blue eyes with blonde hair, is more common than the multiplication suggests, while one that rarely does, such as blue eyes with black hair, is rarer. Blood type is independent of both. The frequencies are national averages from public datasets — see Data Sources.
That number describes the body you were born with. Fraeon, our other site, does the same arithmetic for the part you chose: the films, series, games, books, anime and manga you have actually finished. Start your log →
๐๏ธ Since 2024 a Dutch Child Can Carry Both Surnames
Dutch surname law changed at the start of 2024. In the version of Article 1:5 of the Civil Code that was in force from 1 July 2023 to 31 December 2023, parents registering a birth had to โverklaren โฆ welke van hun beider geslachtsnamen het kind zal hebbenโ โ declare which one of their two surnames the child would carry. One name; the birth declaration had no room for a combination.
The article in force since 1 January 2024 lets them pick โde geslachtsnamen van beide ouders in een vrij te bepalen volgordeโ instead: both surnames, in an order they choose. Two limits come with it. If a parent's own surname is already a combination of two surnames, the article says โmaximaal รฉรฉn geslachtsnaam uit de combinatieโ can be passed on, so names do not keep growing. And later children of the same parents take the same surname as the first. For a site that counts how many people share a name, that means a Dutch child registered from 1 January 2024 can be entered under both parents' surnames, which the birth-declaration rule did not allow the year before.
๐๏ธ The Dutch Record Forgets Your Grandparents
People arrive at a page like this wanting to know how Dutch they are. CBS's own classification does not answer that, and it is worth seeing why. CBS defines Nederlandse herkomst as โIn Nederland geboren personen met in Nederland geboren oudersโ โ born here, to parents born here. Grandparents do not appear in the definition at all.
The rest of the classification stops in the same place. CBS builds herkomst from two parts: whether a person and their parents were born in the Netherlands or abroad, and the country of origin that follows from those birthplaces. Where both parents were born abroad, CBS takes the mother's country of birth as the deciding one โ her birth details are more often known โ falling back to the father's if hers is the Netherlands or unknown. So someone whose grandparents came from elsewhere, but whose parents were born here, is recorded as of Dutch origin with nothing further attached. CBS developed this classification in 2021 and has been rolling it through its statistics, StatLine tables and other publications since early 2022. Being built out of birthplaces, it records none of the traits in the table above โ which is much of why some numbers on this page have an institution behind them and others do not.
โญ Rare Facts About Netherlands
Which numbers here have an institution behind them
The population figure is the CBS population counter, which CBS itself calls a realtime forecast, calculated from past statistical data plus monthly birth, mortality and migration patterns rather than counted. The height figures in the section below are CBS table 81565NED; the 183 cm in the tile above is not a CBS figure. The blood-group, eye-colour and hair-colour rows in the table are estimates from research and survey sources, not official statistics. For blood groups there is a Dutch institution with published figures — Sanquin gives O+ 38.2%, A+ 36.6%, B+ 7.7%, O− 6.8%, A− 6.4%, AB+ 2.5%, B− 1.3% and AB− 0.5% — and the rounded numbers in the table above do not match them. More at Data Sources. Last checked September 2026.