Genealogy

of the Speelpenning family

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The name Speelpenning is very rare.  There are exactly four Speelpennings living in the North American continent, and they all live under the same roof.  The name is Dutch, and originates in the small town of Heenvliet, on a small island named Voorne in the Rhine delta.  There are less than a hundred people alive, world wide, with this name; almost all of them in Holland, many still on the same little island.  If you look at the descendant charts, you will see why:  Speelpennings tend to have more daughters than sons, and it is hence surprising the name has survived at all.
Why do we care about the survival of this name?  Well, we really don't.  But if you start getting engaged in genealogy, you quickly discover that everybody is related to pretty much everybody else.  This is good.  But for it to remain a hobby, you need some focus.  Focussing on people with this last name is actually very convenient, because there are literally no false hits.  In contrast, my wife's maiden name is Matthews, and there is Matthewses everywhere, and Charles Matthewses by the hundreds.

The meaning of  the name Speelpenning is not clear.  In modern Dutch, the word is used only very occasionally, in the meaning of a chip representing money, as in gambling.  As an explanation for the origin of a name, this is not very satisfactory - why would anybody have called himself by that name or be called that by others as a nickname?   Another theory derives the name Speelpenning from the word spilpenning, meaning spendthrift.  This word does not exist in modern Dutch, but was used in the 17th century.  There is a painting "De Spilpenning" from 1741 by Cornelis Troost, inspired by the third act of the play by the same name written by Thomas Asselijn (about 1620-1701).  It is not hard to see how "spendthrift" might be someone's nickname, and over time turn into a last name.

De Spilpenning, by Cornelis Troost 1741

The Speelpenning genealogy is currently rendered as a single web page.
The Dutch version is here.  To offer corrections or remarks (in Dutch), click here

Bert Speelpenning, Aug 1998.