In English, the surname/last name/family name is passed down from the father. We generally use one first name and one surname: Mary Parker Mary may also have a middle name, but it's rarey used: Mary Jo Parker However, since many people immigrate to English-speaking countries bringing with them their own surnames, this complicates the issue. In your example, Van der Kleij is a German surname. In modern times, women may choose to keep their maiden name, adding to their husband's surname, usually with a hyphen. In this case, the woman's maiden name comes first. Mary Smith-Parker In some cases (though rare), a person may have two first names or use their middle name regularly. In this case, you would have to be familiar with English names to know if the name in the middle is part of the first name or part of the surname. Mary Louise Parker

US: No, there's no way to know. There are some good ways to guess. Generally speaking, in the US - you can name your child anything you want to. And you can change your name to whatever you want to change it to.* So in the US, you have people from everywhere in the world who have names from their own country (and name their children names that are familiar in their first languages), people who combine names from multiple countries, people who hear names or words and call their children (or themselves) that, and people who just make up names for themselves and their children. This happens for both given names and family names. (And in fact, some people decide they do not want family names at all). Some people have multiple word first names, some have multiple first names, some have multiple word last names. So when you see a name, there is no way to be sure what's the first name or what's the family name or even if there is a family name. That said - there are some patterns with some last names; some have prefixes that are part of the last name and separated by space (sometimes they're not separated by spaces. It really depends) "de" or "le" ("De" or "Le") are often part of a last name. (often French origin). "van" or "van der" (or either of those with capital letters) are frequently part of a last name (often Dutch origin). "Mac" or "Mc" (Scots), "Fitz," "al," "bin," "ibn," "von" (German), etc. Oftentimes (but not always) for Spanish or Portuguese names the last two longer words are the family name. The more familiar you get with names, the easier it is to guess. "Hanneke van der Kleij" I would assume "Hanneke" is the given name "van der Kleij" is the family name and that Hanneke might have some ancestors from the Netherlands. * Again, generally speaking, as long as you aren't trying to fool the police or get away from people you owe money to, you can change your name.

There are some last names that start with the preposition "of", or its equivalents from other languages. For example, O'Brien (a contraction of "of Brien") means "descendant of Brian". In your example it's Hanneke van der (of the) Kleij, so the first name is Hanneke and the last name is Van der Kleij.