clienten

Clienten is the plural form of the Dutch noun cliënt, used to refer to a person who receives professional services from an individual or organization. The term is common in health care, social work, law, and consultancy, and it connotes a service relationship rather than a medical diagnosis. In everyday language and many official texts, the standard Dutch plural is cliënten; clienten is a widespread informal or non-diacritic variant.

Origin and usage: The word cliënt comes from Latin cliens via Romance languages, and in Dutch it functions as a neutral term for someone who seeks or receives assistance or services. While cliënt emphasizes agency and mutual engagement, terms like patiënt or klant convey different nuances: patiënt for medical patients; klant for consumer customers.

Contexts: In health care and social services, professionals talk about their cliënten; in legal practice they have clients who seek advice or representation; in IT and business, the English loanword client is used for software clients or service recipients.

Rights and privacy: As service recipients, cliënten have rights to informed consent, confidentiality, and data protection under applicable law, including GDPR in the EU.

Regional note: The term is used in the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium; spelling conventions vary, with cliënten being the normative form and clienten a common variant in unedited or non-diacritic texts.

See also: klant, patiënt, cliëntrechten, privacy, GDPR, informed consent.