Mulder
A Dutch occupational surname meaning “miller.”
The #4,822 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 42,196 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Mulder comes from Dutch mulder, an older regional word for a miller. It is ultimately related to the same Germanic word family as English mill and miller, referring to someone who worked at or owned a grain mill. In some areas it could also appear in forms influenced by local speech, alongside spellings and related surnames built from the same occupation.
History
Mulder is especially common in the Netherlands and neighboring Dutch- and Low German-speaking areas. The name fits a very common pattern in surnames: a person was identified simply by their job, and the label then became hereditary. Related forms such as Smulders and Smolders also reflect the same occupational root in older regional pronunciation.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Dutch surname dictionaries often note that a village’s only miller might be known simply as “the Mulder,” and his children could inherit that label as a family name.
From the historical record
“Mulbrunno 319. Mulde 628. Mulder 628. ^Mulefingen 471. Mulert 215. *Mulgirren 392. *Mulihusa 479, 483. "t^Mulipah 311.”
— Die Personennamen, insbesondere die Familiennamen