Where the name comes from

The family name Kingma is older than the family. It is the name of a place: the sate (farm) Kinghum on a terp (dwelling mound) near Zweins, in the district of Franekeradeel, close to Franeker. The people who lived there were named after the place, and in the sixteenth century that description grew into the family name Kingma. What the first part of Kinghum means is unknown. That the name comes from conch shells (kinkhoorns) is unlikely; whether the shells in the coat of arms have anything to do with the name is discussed further down.

From Kinghum to Kingma

The place first appears in the records of the rechtsomgang of Franekeradeel, the system in which the administration of justice rotated among the estates. In 1413 Sicke Sjaerda was "ruychter van Kinghum" (judge on behalf of Kinghum); that entry survives only in the printed version Schotanus published in 1658 (Oudfriesche Oorkonden II, no. 18). Under the regulation of 1433 Zweins had two judgeships, "dij ena toe Kingghum, ende dijn othera toe Sweijnze an dae Buren" (the one at Kinghum and the other at Zweins, among the neighbours) (Oudfriesche Oorkonden II, no. 17). The oldest spelling in an original document is in the will of Edwer Sjaerda of 27 May 1510: "dat gued thoe Kinghum" (the property at Kinghum) (Oudfriesche Oorkonden II, no. 238).

Whoever lived at Kinghum was named after it. The aanbreng (tax return) of 1511 lists "Pieter Jelle zoen toe Kingen" (Pieter, son of Jelle, at Kingen), and calls his father "Jelle Kinghen"; the same register also has "Jelle Kinggema", the oldest known form ending in -ma (aanbreng of 1511 and 1514, Tjessinga's edition). These are the progenitor Jelle Kingum (born around 1450) and his son Pieter Jelles Kingum (born around 1480). In 1514 Pieter is "Peter Kenghem". In 1529 "Pieter to Kemgum wonachtig tot Sweyns" (Pieter of Kemgum, living at Zweins) claims the hunting rights on the land "van der sate geheeten Te Kemgum" (of the farm called Te Kemgum) (swan book of 1529, De Vries's edition of 1959). The dyke allocation of 1546 has "Pieter Kengma" and "Pieter Kingum" in one document (Register van den aanbreng III).

The spelling kept changing for a long time. In deeds of sale from 1571 to 1580 Pieter's sons Jelle Pieters Kingum and Claes are still called Kingum, but the farm is by then "Kinguma zate" and "Kingma zate", and in 1580 Jelle himself is "Kinguma": 'of Kingum'. The deed of sale of the estate of 1611 only has Kingma (De Kinkhoorn 3). After that the forms Kingema and, among the later occupants of the estate, Van Kingma also occur (see Ignatius).

What does Kinghum mean?

Kinghum ends in -um, like many place names in Friesland and surrounding areas. The ending is related to hiem (Frisian), heem (Dutch), -heim (German) and home and -ham (English), and means a farmyard, a dwelling place. Place-name scholarship also counts Kinghum among the heem names (Gildemacher, Friese plaatsnamen, 2007). Names in -um are the oldest Frisian terp names, but according to Gildemacher's research they were not formed before the fifth or sixth century (Fryske Akademy, 2009). Kinghum is therefore probably an early medieval name, much older than the family named after it.

What the first part, King-, means, nobody knows. In 2007 Gildemacher suggested "wellicht een persoonsnaam" (perhaps a personal name) built on the Germanic stem kuni, 'kin, tribe'. In 2018 Van Berkel and Samplonius reconstructed a *Kuningahem, 'dwelling place of the people of Kuna' (etymologiebank, Kingmatille). Yet in his collection of Frisian terp names of 2008 Gildemacher left the first part open: there Kingum is "woonplaats van ?" (dwelling place of ?) (HisGIS, Terpnamen Fryslân layer). Because *kuninga- is also the Germanic form from which the word for 'king' developed (etymologiebank, koning), a 'king's dwelling' also remains possible.

Three other explanations have been handed down in the family. Kinghum would be the home of Kinge, an old Frisian first name (De Kinkhoorn 2; Herman van Slooten said the same in 1969, De Kinkhoorn 16). The name would come from a kink, a sharp bend in the road by the farm (De Kinkhoorn 15). Or from a spot in the sea clay full of whelk shells, a 'Kinkum' (De Kinkhoorn 1). Further research (2026) makes all three unlikely:

• Kinge. No medieval first name Kinge has been found anywhere. The name does exist, but as a pet name from children's speech for Rinse or Rinske (Nederlandse Voornamenbank, Kinge); in 1898 Winkler described it as "hedendaags als ongeschreven vleivorm van Rinse in gebruik" (nowadays in use as an unwritten pet form of Rinse) (Winkler, Friesche naamlijst, 1898). And in 1511 Jelle is not named after a father called Kinge, but after the place: "Jelle Kinghen".
• Kink. The Dutch word kink (twist, bend) is only recorded from 1636; before that it occurs only in kinkhoren, 'spiral shell' (1488) (etymologiebank, kink). A name from the early Middle Ages can hardly be based on a word that turns up centuries later. The provincial archaeologist also doubted this explanation, because a feature of the landscape rarely explains a medieval Frisian name (De Kinkhoorn 15).
• Whelks in the clay. The same word problem applies here. Moreover, all the old forms have -ngh- or -ngg- (Kinghum, Kingghum, Kinggema), never the -nk- of a 'Kinkum'. Kees Kingma, who put forward the idea in the first issue of De Kinkhoorn, himself called it "pure speculatie" (pure speculation) (De Kinkhoorn 1).

How old the settlement on the site is, we do not know exactly. The salt-marsh ridge Salverd-Zweins-Schingen became habitable around the middle of the second century BC (De Vrije Fries 79, 1999, p. 31), but that applies to the whole row of terps, not to Kinghum itself. The terp directly north of the estate was dug away in the nineteenth century for its fertile soil. Borings on the spot in 2009 brought up black, coarse pottery that closely resembles Late Iron Age ware, but according to the report may also be Hessens-Schortens ware from the late Merovingian or early Carolingian period (Becker & Van de Graaf, 2009). When the place was given the name Kinghum cannot be inferred from this.

The name and the conch shells

The family coat of arms shows two black conch shells (kinkhoorns) on silver, and the newsletter De Kinkhoorn is named after them (De Kinkhoorn 1). Do these shells have anything to do with the name?

That Kinghum comes from kinkhoorn is unlikely, for the reasons given above: the word kink is too young, and the old forms have -ngh-, not -nk-.

The other way round is possible. The name is probably much older than the coat of arms: Kinghum already existed as a place name in 1413, probably for centuries, while the first people named after the place only appear around 1500. The family may therefore have chosen the shells to depict its name. De Kinkhoorn 16 already makes this point, alongside Herman van Slooten's explanation of the name: the kinkhoorn as a heraldic figure may be connected with the name, "die ouder zal zijn dan het wapen" (which is probably older than the arms) (De Kinkhoorn 16).

The description at the recognition of Julius Matthijs van Beijma thoe Kingma as a nobleman in 1842 does speak of two "Tritonshoorens van sabel" (black triton shells), and that is also how they are drawn there; the list of arms in the Buttinga genealogy of 1930 also has "twee zwarte tritonshoornen" (two black triton shells) (Delpher), whereas Rietstap in 1890 writes "zwarte kinkhoorntjes" (little black conch shells) (Rietstap, De wapens van den tegenwoordigen en den vroegeren Nederlandschen adel). Kees Kingma saw this as a mix-up (De Kinkhoorn 5). But in seventeenth-century Dutch a kinkhoorn and a triton shell were the same thing: a kinkhoorn was a large twisted sea shell that looked like a horn, above all the horn blown by the sea god Triton. Vondel wrote: "Op zijnen kinckhoorn maeckt den Triton heesch geluyt" (on his conch Triton makes a hoarse sound) (Vondel, Vorstelijcke warande der dieren), and the naturalist Rumphius, who died on Ambon in 1702, described the triton shell (Charonia tritonis) and added: "onze Duitsche noemen dezelve Kinkhoorens" (our countrymen call them kinkhoorns) (Rumphius, D'Amboinsche rariteitkamer, 1705). Only sailors also used the word for the whelk (Le Francq van Berkhey, 1769); that kinkhoorn now mainly means the North Sea whelk is a later development. The triton shells of 1842 are therefore probably the same kinkhoorns under their learned name, and the pun on the name remains possible. Such canting arms are common in heraldry: twisted shells are rare in coats of arms, and where they occur they often play on the name, like the whelks of the English Shelley family (Mistholme, heraldic dictionary). The heraldist J.C. Terluin read the figures in 2004 as "hulken": a snail shell, "de hulk als onderkomen" (the shell as a dwelling), possibly a reference to the estate "als trots bezit van de familie" (as the family's proud possession) (De Kinkhoorn 11).

None of the sources we know says why the family chose the shells. So the name probably does not come from the kinkhoorn; that the kinkhoorn in the coat of arms comes from the name is possible, but has not been shown.

Tracing your ancestors

Many people are curious about their "roots". The search usually starts with parents and grandparents. Tracing your ancestry back to French times, around 1810, is often not that difficult, as you can use the civil registers and the population registers, most of which are online (AlleFriezen, Open Archieven) and held at Tresoar in Leeuwarden. The name registry of 1811/1812, which followed a survey in which everyone had to pick a surname, is also particularly valuable. Before then, many people did not have surnames, although some families did have a long history of using a family name. Naturally, this would also be the name they registered as a surname. The name Kingma appears in more than twenty of those registers, spread across Friesland.

As you delve deeper, however, things become more complicated, as you will have to rely on church baptism, wedding and burial records. Unfortunately, the records of some church congregations go back further than others. The Fryske Akademy has published a guide for genealogical research, which is an excellent tool for lineage research.

Who descends from Jelle?

In addition to descendants of ancestor Jelle’s male line, there are many Kingmas who descend from the female line of the first Kingmas. Before the French era, it was not unusual for persons without a family name to adopt the name used by their mother or grandmother. This was the case, for instance, with Hylke Jans Kingma of Makkum, who in 1771, together with two of his brothers, took the name of his grandmother Trijntje (van) Kingma, and with his descendants (known as the ‘Makkum branch’, which gave rise to Kingma’s Bank).

Over the centuries, the latter branch, as well as others, have spread beyond Friesland and can now be found throughout the Netherlands and the rest of the world. This is also known as the Frisian diaspora.

The lecture at the Kingma Day of 2000 held that virtually all Kingmas, through the male or the female line, descend from ancestor Jelle from Zweins (De Kinkhoorn 2). ‘Virtually’, because the Kingma van Birdaard family of skippers forms an exception. Antje Aedes was married to Jan Johannes Kingma, who came from "our" family. A relative of hers (the Dutch text says neef, which can mean nephew or cousin), Gosse Jans, who was not part of the Kingma family, also adopted the name Kingma in 1812 (name registration Blija, 1812). This gave rise to a new Kingma family not related to our ‘ancestor’ Jelle and found mainly in Birdaard and the Dokkum area.

Research in 2026 shows that ‘virtually’ goes too far. The name-adoption registers of 1811 and 1812 contain more than fifty entries for the name Kingma (or Kingema), in more than twenty registers. Some of them already bore the name; others only adopted it then. The register itself usually does not say which (the printed form says ‘aanneemt’, adopts, for almost everyone); that comes from other records. The family tree now knows a number of families who chose the name themselves at that time, among others at Rinsumageest, Gorredijk, Nijland, Tjerkwerd and Franeker. None of their founders is known to be linked to Jelle. See Name adoption of 1811.