If you learn one Dutch preposition properly, make it van. It is the workhorse for "of" and "from," and — crucially for an English speaker — it is how Dutch says what English packs into the apostrophe-s: de auto van mijn vader, "my father's car." English leans on the 's-genitive (the dog's tail, Anna's house); spoken Dutch has no living version of that, so it routes almost all of it through van. This page covers van's main senses — possession, origin, material, part-whole, and authorship — and the place it most reliably trips learners: the English 's that doesn't transfer.
Van as possession — replacing the English 's
The headline use. To say "X's Y," Dutch flips the order and inserts van: the possessed thing first, then van, then the possessor.
the possessed + van + the possessor
So my father's car becomes de auto van mijn vader — literally "the car of my father." This is not a stiff, formal alternative the way "the car of my father" feels in English; it is the normal, neutral, everyday way to express possession.
De auto van mijn vader is weer kapot.
My father's car is broken down again.
Het huis van de buren staat te koop.
The neighbours' house is up for sale.
Is dit jouw jas of de jas van Anna?
Is this your coat or Anna's coat?
Notice you have to flip the order. English leads with the owner (my father's car); Dutch leads with the thing owned (de auto van...). English speakers instinctively want to front the possessor, and you have to consciously reverse it.
Why van, and not an ending
Worth understanding rather than memorising, because it explains a whole family of facts. Old Dutch, like German and Old English, had a real genitive case with possessive endings. Over the centuries that case system collapsed in everyday Dutch, and the gap was filled by the preposition van — exactly as English filled it with of and French with de. The old endings froze into fixed phrases and survive on names, but for productive, build-it-yourself possession, modern Dutch is a van-language. So van is not a clumsy fallback; it is the system.
De kleur van die jas vind ik mooi.
I like the colour of that coat.
De titel van het boek ben ik even kwijt.
I've forgotten the title of the book for a moment.
Van as origin — "from"
Van also means "from," marking the point or source you are coming away from: van het station, van mijn werk, van de markt. The image is movement off / away from a starting point.
Ik kom net van het station, het was druk in de trein.
I've just come from the station, the train was busy.
Hij belde me van zijn werk.
He called me from work.
Dit cadeau is van oma.
This present is from grandma.
Here Dutch makes a distinction English blurs. Van is "from (a point/person/surface you move away from)," while uit is "out of (an enclosed space or a place you belong to)." You come van het station (from the station as a point on your route) but uit Nederland (out of the Netherlands, where you're from / inside of). The two overlap enough to confuse learners constantly — the full treatment is on Uit vs Van. The rule of thumb: a country, city, building-as-container, or anything you were inside takes uit; a point, surface, or person you move off/away from takes van.
Ik kom uit Amsterdam, maar nu kom ik net van mijn werk.
I'm from Amsterdam (uit, my origin-place), but right now I'm coming from work (van, the point on my route).
Van as material — "made of"
Van expresses what something is made of: gemaakt van hout, van glas, van katoen. The construction is usually (gemaakt) van + material.
Deze tafel is helemaal van massief hout gemaakt.
This table is made entirely of solid wood.
Pas op, het glas is van echt kristal.
Careful, the glass is real crystal (made of crystal).
Een trui van wol kriebelt soms een beetje.
A wool jumper (a jumper of wool) sometimes itches a bit.
This is the same van as origin, really — the material is the "source" the object is made from. English uses "of" or "from" here too ("made of wood," "made from wood"), so the sense maps cleanly.
Van for part-whole — "one of"
To pick a member out of a group, Dutch uses van: een van de + plural, sommige van, de meeste van, niemand van. This is the "X of the Y" partitive.
Dit is een van de mooiste plekken die ik ken.
This is one of the most beautiful places I know.
Niemand van ons wist het antwoord.
None of us knew the answer.
De meeste van mijn vrienden wonen niet meer hier.
Most of my friends don't live here any more.
Watch the agreement: een van de boeken (singular een picking from a plural group); the verb agrees with whatever the head is. This pattern is fully parallel to English "one of the books."
Van for authorship and source
Van attributes a work or statement to its maker, author, or source: een boek van Mulisch, een schilderij van Rembrandt, een liedje van mijn favoriete band. It answers "by whom / from what source?"
Ik ben een boek van Mulisch aan het lezen.
I'm reading a book by Mulisch.
Heb je dat nieuws van Anouk gehoord?
Did you hear that news from Anouk?
Dat is een bekend nummer van The Beatles.
That's a well-known song by The Beatles.
Note that English splits this between "by" (an author) and "from" (a source); Dutch uses van for both. Een boek van Mulisch covers "a book by Mulisch."
Common Mistakes
The errors cluster around the 's that doesn't transfer, the word order flip, and the van / uit origin split.
❌ mijn vaders auto (for 'my father's car')
Wrong — the English 's-genitive doesn't apply to common nouns. 'Vader' isn't a bare name.
✅ de auto van mijn vader
My father's car.
❌ van mijn vader de auto
Wrong order — the possessed thing comes first, then van, then the owner.
✅ de auto van mijn vader
The car of my father.
❌ Ik kom van Amsterdam. (meaning 'I'm from Amsterdam', my home town)
Wrong sense — for the place you originate from, use uit. 'Van Amsterdam' would mean 'from Amsterdam as a point on my journey'.
✅ Ik kom uit Amsterdam.
I'm from Amsterdam.
❌ Deze tafel is gemaakt uit hout.
Wrong — material takes van, not uit. 'Uit' is for enclosed spaces/origin-places.
✅ Deze tafel is gemaakt van hout.
This table is made of wood.
❌ een boek door Mulisch (calquing English 'by')
Wrong — authorship of a work is van, not door. (Door marks the agent in a passive: 'geschreven door Mulisch' is fine — see Door and the Agent.)
✅ een boek van Mulisch
A book by Mulisch.
Key Takeaways
- van is Dutch's all-purpose "of/from" and the default way to show possession: de auto van mijn vader, with the order possessed + van + possessor.
- The English 's-genitive does not transfer to common nouns; it survives only on bare names (Jans auto). For everything else, use van.
- van = "from" a point/surface/person you move away from; uit = "out of" an enclosed space or origin-place. Van het station but uit Nederland.
- van also covers material (gemaakt van hout), part-whole (een van de boeken), and authorship/source (een boek van Mulisch).
- Authorship is van, not door; door marks the agent only inside a passive construction.
Now practice Dutch
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Start learning Dutch→Related Topics
- Dutch Prepositions: OverviewA1 — The big picture before the details: Dutch prepositions are largely idiomatic and almost never map one-to-one onto English, one Dutch preposition often covers several English ones (and vice versa), many verbs lock onto a fixed preposition (wachten op, denken aan), and a preposition plus er fuses into erop / eraan. Why word-for-word translation from English fails.
- Uit vs Van: Out Of vs FromB1 — Two ways to say 'from' that English collapses into one: uit (out of an enclosed space, and the country/town you originate from — Ik kom uit Nederland, uit de kast) versus van (away from a point, a surface, or a person — van het station, van de tafel, van mijn moeder). Why your nationality is uit but the place you just left is van, and why surfaces split the two.
- Possession with VanA1 — The default way to say 'my father's car' in Dutch is the van-construction — de auto van mijn vader — which is obligatory for ordinary nouns. Spoken Dutch also uses a colloquial possessive-dative (mijn vader z'n auto, Marie d'r jas) that is ubiquitous in speech but stigmatised in writing.
- The Possessive -s and NamesA2 — The one fully living genitive in modern Dutch is the possessive -s on personal names: Jans fiets (no apostrophe after a consonant), Anna's auto (apostrophe before -s after a long vowel), Hans' jas (bare apostrophe after a sibilant) — everything else uses van.
- Possessive Pronouns (Standalone)B1 — How to say 'mine, yours, ours' as a standalone word — not 'my car' but 'the car is mine'. Dutch has two ways: the inflected de/het + mijne/jouwe/zijne/hare/onze/hunne (Dat is de mijne), which is correct but bookish, and the everyday van mij / van jou / van ons (Die auto is van mij), which is what people actually say. Steer to van + object pronoun for speech.