Stuyvesant

Dutch surname

"drifting sand dune"

Stuyvesant Origin and Meaning

The name Stuyvesant is a boy's name meaning "drifting sand dune".

Associated with two prominent American families — New York's Stuyvesant family, for which streets and parks on Manhattan's East Side are named, and the Fish family, who used it as a given name. Stuyvesant Fish, the first president of the Illinois Central Railroad, was named after his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Stuyvesant.

Though Stuyvesant is Dutch in origin, this spelling does not appear in the Netherlands today. There you will find the original forms of the name, Stuivezand and Stuifzand, from the words stuiven, meaning "to flow or drift" and and, "sand".