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Re: Niesje- How to pronouce?
I think the closest (English) phonetic spelling would be NEE-shə. The "s" is more part of the first syllable than the second, though (As a Dutch person, I see the name divided into the syllables Nies and je, -je being a diminutive suffix) See also
http://www.behindthename.com/name/niesje/submitted
http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/naam/is/niesje (in Dutch, but I can translate if you want)

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood - George Orwell, 1984
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I found the first link a few days ago but wasn't sure of its accuracy. I don't know anything about Dutch pronounciations. I couldn't get the second link to load though. I'd love a translation if you don't mind. Thanks!
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Shame you can't load the second link - it's mostly graphs and charts, so there's not much Dutch there. What I can tell you is that 1497 living women have it as their first name right now, and 636 as (one of) their second name(s). That's 0.0202% and 0.0086% of the population (I don't know if that's female population or entire population). No men bear the name. It's very rare at this point in time, and even in 1880 (the records don't go further back) only 71 newborn girls were named Niesje (http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/populariteit/absoluut/vrouw/afbeelding/naam/Niesje). Currently it's most popular from the city of Rotterdam up to the province Drenthe (http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/verspreiding/absoluut/vrouw/afbeelding/naam/Niesje). For its etymology it directs back to Agnes. I can't find any stats about Belgium, though.
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Thanks! That was still helpful.
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"even in 1880 (the records don't go further back) only 71 newborn girls were named Niesje"
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I should point out to you that this is only an estimated number. The actual number of newborn girls named Niesje in 1880 is 19.
I got the number from its page source (for Chrome - pressing Control+U to open up its page source, then finding the bit that says var steptotal_value_list = new , showing the actual numbers by year starting in 1880).ETA: I didn't realise that the data before 1930 was incomplete, so forget about what I just said here.

This message was edited 10/11/2015, 1:08 PM

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