History of the surname "ten Pas"?

The winner, obviously.

“Pas” is a dialectical variant of the more standard bosch, I imagine. Ten is almost certainly a contraction of te den (“to the”), den being an obsolete objective case inflection of the masculine definite article de. Dutch no longer inflects the article for case in regular usage, but the old forms are preserved in stock phrases and names.

Te is literally translated as “to”, but like German zu means “at” or even “of” in some contexts, especially in family names. In the case of German names it’s almost always an indication of noble heritage, and is even rarer than “von”. Traditionally, having the last nane “zu X” meant that your family not only were the traditional lords of X since time immemorial, but that you still retain it. “Von und zu X” is another variation of this.

ETA: May I say that I swoon with pride at being a moderator on a message board where, when somebody asks what the name “ten Pas” means, somebody actually named Ten Pas joins to answer the question.

Welcome to the boards, rtenpas!

Welcome, rtenpas.

Now I’m starting to wonder when Mr. or Ms. 14kofginafpd will show up.

Sure, if he was named “of the waffle house” he’d be Belgian not Dutch.

Vennegoor of Hesselink is actually his surname (his first name is easier to handle ‘Jan’).

It always makes me laugh when he steps on the pitch as his name barely fits on his jersey. He is (or was, his career is nearing it’s end) a fairly decent player, good enough to play for the Netherlands.