Explore the Family Name Vandecar

The meaning of Vandecar

Americanized form of Dutch Van de Kar, a topographic name for someone living near a field where kaarde ‘thistle’ grows.

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

How common is the last name Vandecar in the United States?

According to the Decennial U.S. Census, the popularity of the surname Vandecar has slightly decreased in the 2000s. In 2000, it was ranked as the 41,924th most popular surname nationally and slipped slightly to 42,640 by 2010, a change of -1.71 percent. However, the actual count of individuals with the Vandecar surname rose from 488 in 2000 to 508 in 2010, indicating an increase of 4.1 percent. Despite this growth in raw numbers, the proportion of the Vandecar surname per 100,000 people dropped by 5.56 percent over the same period.

	2000	2010	Change
Rank	#41,924	#42,640	-1.71%
Count	488	508	4.1%
Proportion per 100k	0.18	0.17	-5.56%

Race and Ethnicity of people with the last name Vandecar

As for the ethnicity associated with the Vandecar surname, the Decennial U.S. Census data indicates a few shifts between 2000 and 2010. The majority of individuals with the Vandecar surname identified as White, although this percentage declined slightly from 92.42 percent in 2000 to 88.98 percent in 2010. The proportion identifying as Hispanic saw an increase, rising from 3.89 percent in 2000 to 6.30 percent in 2010. Those identifying as having two or more ethnic identities also saw a substantial increase, from 1.23 percent to 2.36 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of American Indian and Alaskan Native identifiers fell from 1.84 percent to 1.57 percent. No Vandecar identifiers reported being Asian/Pacific Islander or Black in either census year.

	2000	2010	Change
White	92.42%	88.98%	-3.72%
Hispanic	3.89%	6.3%	61.95%
Two or More Races	1.23%	2.36%	91.87%
American Indian and Alaskan Native	1.84%	1.57%	-14.67%
Asian/Pacific Islander	0%	0%	0%
Black	0%	0%	0%