Explore the Family Name Pretorius

The meaning of Pretorius

Dutch and German: humanistic name derived from Latin praetor, the title of various officials in Republican and Imperial Rome, sometimes adopted as the Latinized form of Dutch De Preter, an occupational name for a supervisor, commissioner or curator, or of any of various German surnames meaning ‘leader’ or ‘headman’ (see Prator). The surname Pretorius is by far most common in South Africa; in the Netherlands and Germany it is very rare. In North America, it is also an altered form of the more common German variant Prätorius. History: The progenitor of the South African bearers of the surname Pretorius was Johannes Pretorius, one of the earliest Dutch settlers in the Dutch Cape Colony. He was born in 1642 in Ouddorp in the Dutch province of South Holland to Wessel Schulte, known also as Wessel(ius) Pretorius. Johannes Pretorius settled in the Dutch Cape Colony in 1669, where he died in 1694. The city of Pretoria, executive capital of South Africa, is named after one of the most prominent of his descendants, Andries Pretorius (1798–1853), a leader of the Boers.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.