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in your case it seems Dutch. The van part shows that. In most cases, when it isn't followed by de / den / der , it means the surname is a toponym, meaning your ancestor is from a certain place. i think this is the case. i suspected goulden was probably a reference for the Dutch city Gouda (famous for its cheese). so, i checked its history and found out that one of its earlier names was Golda, which consists of gold and a . The first component has the same meaning as the English gold and the second component means 'water'. Golda is actually the name of a river and the city Gouda was built on the banks of this river. The river's name now is Gouwe and the city's name is Gouda. This is probably the story behind your surname, although it might just mean 'from gold, golden', but according the site of the Meertens Instituut (about Dutch surnames) there are now such surnames as Van Gouden and Van Gouwe, which there reasonably should be in that case. But, the surname Van Gouda isn't there as well, although there is the surname Gouda listed.