What Is WieWasWie and How Can You Use It to Research Dutch Ancestors?

Updated

WieWasWie is a Dutch genealogy platform that lets you search historical records and view original documents to trace your ancestors. It is most useful if your family history leads back to the Netherlands, since its database draws on Dutch archives and participating institutions rather than being a general global genealogy site. The site states it holds more than 252 million persons in its database, and it points you toward both a basic search and an "Uitgebreid zoeken" (advanced search) option.

What WieWasWie actually is

WieWasWie ("Who Was Who") is built around searching old documents and then viewing the original. Its content comes from a long list of participating institutions, including:

  • Nationaal Archief
  • Stadsarchief Amsterdam
  • Haags Gemeentearchief
  • Het Utrechts Archief
  • Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum
  • Drents Archief
  • Groninger Archieven
  • Zeeuws Archief
  • CBG|Centrum voor familiegeschiedenis

That institutional backing matters: records are tied to real archive collections, so when you find a match you are usually working with a source that has a provenance, not an unsourced user submission.

How to search the database

The site presents two main paths: a standard search and "Uitgebreid zoeken" (advanced search). The page does not spell out every field, so the practical approach is:

  1. Start with a name and a rough place or period.
  2. If results are too broad, switch to advanced search to narrow by record type, location, or date.
  3. Open a result to see the underlying document and, where available, view the original.

The stated goal of the platform is exactly this sequence: search old documents and view the original. Treat the index entry as a pointer, and the original scan as the evidence you actually evaluate.

What kinds of records you can expect

The site describes its holdings as historical and genealogical sources. In Dutch genealogy these typically cover birth, marriage, and death records, plus other historical documents held by the participating archives. The page itself does not enumerate every record category, so check what a specific institution has contributed before assuming a type of record is included.

Premium access: what it adds

WieWasWie describes a Premiumtoegang (Premium access) with two concrete features:

Feature What it does
Search two people at once Lets you look for two individuals simultaneously
Wildcards * and ? Searches spelling variants of one name, e.g. "Graaf" and "Graeff"

The wildcard function is the more important one for Dutch research, because surname spelling was not standardized historically. If your ancestor appears as "Graeff" in one record and "Graaf" in another, wildcards help you catch both. The page mentions Premium and links to a subscription, but it does not state a price here, so check the subscription page for current terms rather than assuming cost or free access.

The privacy wall and the NRO workaround

A key limitation: because of privacy legislation, you probably will not find recently deceased ancestors in WieWasWie. The site addresses this directly through the Nationaal Register van Overledenen (NRO), which it describes as offering researchers a flying start for people who died recently. The suggested route is to request an uittreksel (extract) from the NRO.

So the practical split is:

  • Older records → search WieWasWie directly.
  • Recent deaths → expect a gap in WieWasWie and use the NRO instead.

A realistic research sequence

For example, if you are looking for a grandfather who died in the 1970s in Rotterdam:

  1. Search WieWasWie first, but expect the recent record may be blocked by privacy rules.
  2. If it is blocked, request an NRO extract.
  3. For earlier generations, search WieWasWie with wildcards enabled if you have Premium, since name spellings will vary.
  4. Open the original document for each match to confirm the identity before adding it to your tree.

Practical takeaways

  • WieWasWie is strongest for Dutch ancestors and archive-backed sources.
  • Use advanced search when a simple name search returns too much.
  • Premium's wildcards are genuinely useful for Dutch name variants; the two-person search is a convenience feature.
  • Do not expect recent deaths in the database — the NRO is the stated alternative.
  • Always verify against the original document rather than trusting the index alone.