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Famous Dutch and Belgian People

Name these famous people who have Dutch or Belgian origins.
Includes fictional characters
Quiz by alberici
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Last updated: February 2, 2016
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First submittedDecember 20, 2014
Times taken16,120
Average score45.5%
Rating4.53
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Clue
Dutch Person
Prince of Orange / father of the country
William
Painter who cut his ear off
Vincent van
Gogh
WWII attic diarist
Anne Frank
"The Night Watch" painter
Rembrandt
Three-time footballer of the year
during the 1970's
Johan Cruyff
First person to see
single-celled organisms
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek
"Discovered" New Zealand
Abel Tasman
Exotic dancer executed for spying
Mata Hari
Artist known for impossible staircases
MC Escher
Mononymous humanist who disagreed
with Luther but preached tolerance
Erasmus
"Girl with a Pearl Earring" painter
Jan Vermeer
Clue
Belgian
Fictional detective
Hercule Poirot
Five-time Tour de France winner
Eddy Merckx
Painter of fleshy women
Peter Paul Rubens
Painter who says what a pipe isn't
René Magritte
Loinclothed, high-kicking martial artist
Jean-Claude
Van Damme
Namesake of a woodwind instrument
Adolphe Sax
Women's tennis greats
Kim Clijsters
Justine Henin
Chanson singer who died in 1978
and was buried in Polynesia
Jacques Brel
Fictional reporter created by Hergé
Tintin
King who owned, and misused,
the Congo
Leopold II
46 Comments
+2
Level 74
Dec 23, 2014
where oh where is Jacques Brel . . .
+1
Level ∞
Dec 23, 2014
Blame me. He was on the quiz originally before I made it "easier".
+1
Level 76
Dec 23, 2014
I'm one of those no-idea-who-he-is people the quizmaster took pity on! So I thought I better find out what all the fuss is about, and am enjoying listening to him, helpfully subtitled in Dutch.
+3
Level 87
Dec 27, 2014
Jacques Brel is one of the most important french-speaking singer of the 20th century. Most french and belgian people know him.
+1
Level ∞
Feb 2, 2016
@alberici made a change today to add Brel and remove Django Reinhardt.
+2
Level 72
Aug 15, 2016
Both are worthy of this quiz. By the way, I really enjoyed it, mixing the tricky and the easy, with great cultural references (the surrealist painter and the namesake of a musical instrument, to not name them and spoil the quiz ;)
+1
Level 86
Jan 8, 2022
He's alive and well and living in Paris.
+2
Level 87
Dec 27, 2014
The smurfs are not Belgian, they live in an imaginary land. Their creator was, but it doesn't count (it would be like saying that Hercule Poirot is English because Agatha Christie was...). Why not put Tintin instead if you want one of our comics characters? By the way, I find the Belgian list less prestigious than the Dutch one, that's not fair :p.
+1
Level 76
Dec 29, 2014
Well that's the nature of Belgians when compared to the Dutch ;-) . I missed 2 of your sports people and I know the names it seems. A bit ashamed I missed the Dutch humanist. 2 of the Belgians I never heard of, but I have heard of all the Dutchies.
+1
Level 74
Jan 31, 2015
Fixed.
+1
Level 81
Feb 1, 2015
None of the people on the Dutch list ever made a movie with Dennis Rodman.
+1
Level 90
Dec 5, 2019
Leopold's very famous. You have him.
+2
Level 76
Feb 1, 2015
I knew Cruyff, Merckx and Clijsters but couldnt get the spellings right.
+1
Level 60
Jan 14, 2020
I missed Clijsters because I interchanged the I and the J
+1
Level 58
Apr 11, 2024
isn't clijsters written with an k
+1
Level 74
Feb 1, 2015
I am in awe of anyone who aced this one.
+3
Level 87
Feb 1, 2015
You really shouldn't. It's rather easy for cultivated western europeans.
+1
Level 72
Jul 26, 2018
Well, I may not be a "cultivated western European" just a bucolic rube from the USA, but I received 5 points - without cheating. I do admit to missing the painter/pipe question and guessing at the sax question, but that one was pretty obvious even for a lowly American.
+2
Level 86
Jan 8, 2022
Sure, but western Europeans don't tend to BE very well cultivated (with individual exceptions of course). If the comments on JetPunk are anything to go by, the majority of western Europeans are spectacularly ignorant of anything outside of their own immediate surroundings and see that as a flaw in the rest of the world rather than themselves.
+3
Level 87
Mar 19, 2015
The list for Belgians is quite bizarre: two imaginary characters and a non-Belgian. Django Reinhardt was only born in Belgium, he never actually lived there nor did he ever hold the nationality. If that counts, I'm hereby officially claiming Audrey Hepburn (born in Brussels) as one of us. Surely we can come up with some better answers? Gerardus Mercator? Georges Lemaitre? Anthony van Dyck? Pieter Brueghel the Elder? Jan van Eyck? Finally, JCVD should top any list!
+1
Level 74
Mar 21, 2015
No Comment
+2
Level 87
Dec 13, 2015
Wouldn't know what's wrong with those names. Anyone with a basic knowledge of geography (quite a few of those on this site) would know Mercator. Lemaitre basically came up with the bigbang theory and the expanding universe, before Hubble. Well known by anyone with a passing interest in physics. Van Dyck was probably the most influential court painter the UK ever had. Breughel and van Eyck had a much larger impact on art than any of the artists currently on the list. Again, anyone with a passing interest in art should know those names.
+1
Level 74
Dec 13, 2015
I tried to vary a little bit: there were already Rubens and Magritte among the featured painters (I picked them because according to me they were the most famous ones; not the most influential ones), even though it is true that van Dyck was quite influential too. Concerning Django Reinhardt, Quizmaster put that one in and removed Jacques Brel. Indeed, he is not Belgian as I checked on Wikipedia. Lemaitre would also deserve a place on this list (as well as Georges Simenon), but I have never heard of Mercator before.
+2
Level 87
Dec 18, 2015
Fair enough. Too many well known painters, too little of anything else I guess. The Mercator projection was until very recently the standard map projection for non-academic purposes (it's the one where Greenland and Africa are about the same size), so in that regard pretty famous.
+4
Level 71
Mar 26, 2015
if stromae was on here i would be so happy!
+7
Level 59
Dec 11, 2017
could you accept Kuifje for Tinitin? That is how we know him in Dutch
+1
Level 78
Jul 2, 2018
Damn! I couldn't spell either Kloisters or Leuwenhoek - and I still can't. Some people just don't learn.
+5
Level 36
Aug 5, 2018
Why did you keep all the names as originally spelled, but accepted "William" instead of "Willem" for the Prins van Oranje. (Yes, Prins van Oranje, not Prince of Orange!)
+1
Level 72
Dec 6, 2018
wanted to say why isnt rubens accepted and with all the other answers just the last name worked ( I think even gogh worked instead of van gogh...)

But I realise I never tried to put the s at the end only typed ruben and moved on when i saw that wasnt the answer...

(doubted though, but "voted"against it. Cause voluptuous women are sometimes called rubensrouwen (ruben's ladies, but apparently rubens' ladies, If I used the apostrophe right, here.) so I took the s for an added s (dont know the correct term for it in english, possessive I guess, but that makes me doubt because it isnt about possession but derivation)

+1
Level 87
Jan 31, 2019
Thanks for the spelling leniency on "Leeuwenhoek." I'm not sure what I typed, but it wasn't that.
+3
Level 24
Mar 6, 2019
Anne Frank wasn't Dutch, she was German
+2
Level 62
Jul 1, 2019
Since she lost her German citizenship she is considered stateless. So neither German nor Dutch.
+1
Level 90
Dec 5, 2019
Not a single Van Halen in sight.
+1
Level 67
Feb 22, 2020
I had to google the spelling of Leeuwenhoek.
+2
Level 75
Mar 13, 2020
why did Van Leuwenhoek not work? Seems like that should be acceptable
+1
Level 66
Oct 24, 2021
It's Van Leeuwenhoek
+1
Level 74
Aug 13, 2020
I was so sure Eden Hazard would be here.
+3
Level 82
Sep 29, 2020
A point of order please QM and alberici. He isn't a/the namesake of a woodwind instrument; he is the inventor of it. The name of the instrument is derived from his surname. Definition of namesake: a person or thing that has the same name as another. The instrument was named after him, or for him, to use the US idiom rather than the English.
+1
Level 73
Dec 16, 2020
Can you accept some more spelling variations like "van Leuwenhoek" because I tried several and none were accepted.
+1
Level 75
Oct 26, 2021
Yes, I'm pretty sure I typed "Leuwenhoek" and it wasn't accepted. (I was proud of getting as close as I did, too!)
+1
Level 53
Nov 5, 2024
i mean.. it's a name. can we accept oppenhimer for oppenheimer too then? or instein for einstein?
+2
Level 65
May 17, 2021
What about James Ensor? Belgium's famous painter.
+2
Level 49
Jun 22, 2021
I always thought a saxaphone was brass not woodwind
+1
Level 78
Mar 10, 2022
Sad that "Jan Amoeba" didn't work for the first person to see single-celled organisms.
+1
Level 60
Sep 19, 2022
No Max Verstappen?
+1
Level 67
Jul 17, 2024
He doesn't say what a pipe isn't, he says what isn't a pipe :)