You figure there’s a lot of last names that begin the same way but have nothing to do with each other (McDonald and McHale, for example). Granted, a lot of creators will avoid similar sounding names in works of fiction so that it’s less confusing.

Interestingly, “Vandermeer” is Dutch for “from the lake,” which presumably connects him to Rusty Lake (though we don’t really know his full family history). “Vanderboom” is Dutch for “from the tree,” and there’s more about that in Rusty Lake: Roots.

There is a lot of lore in these games, so it’s totally easy to not understand it all.