On the Origin of Hagionyms in North American French Surnames

Abstract

Most surnames of French origin in North America were borne by migrants from various parts of France, so it is hardly surprising that the two sets should share many commonalities. One of these involves the existence of hagionymic family names, for example, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Jean, Sainte-Marie, and the like. A significant difference between them, however, is that the ones in present-day France invariably stem from surnames that were taken directly from hagiotoponyms, of which there were a great many, whereas the majority of those in North America originate from nicknames — the so-called dit names — of various types. Prominent among these were the numerous noms de guerre that discharged soldiers passed on to their descendants.

Keywords:

• surnames
• hagionyms
• origins
• France
• Canada

Notes on contributor

Marc Picard teaches linguistics and communication at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec, Canada, and has published extensively in linguistics and onomastics. His latest books are Dictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français, On the Problematic Surnames in the Dictionary of American Family Names, and Dictionary of Americanized French-Canadian Names.

Notes

1 For example, Reaney and Wilson (2005) cite only four such names, all of which are from placenames, viz., St Barbe (> Simbarb) from Sainte-Barbe-en-Poitou in Haute-Vienne (now Saint-Barbant), St John (> Sinjin) from Saint-Jean-le-Thomas in Manche, St Nicholas (> Sennicles) from St Nicholas-at-Wade in Kent, and St Quintin from Saint-Quentin-des-Isles in Eure.

2 Translation: “not only in Spain but in other countries with a long Catholic tradition like Portugal, Italy or France, surnames that come from the names of male or female saints are very frequent. In the majority of cases, these surnames come from placenames.”

3 Translation: “most family names that begin with saint represent placenames.”

4 Though proportionately the same, the numbers given by Jacob (2006: 316) are much higher since they are based on data from the PRDH website which lists all the orthographical variants on record.

5 The exceptions include St-Clair which is a francization of English Sinclair, St-Ange and St-Fleur which are from Haiti and thus of unknown French provenance (if any), and St-Onge which is an alteration of Saintonge.

6 The other categories of noms de guerre identified by Lépine (2004) include (1) place of origin, e.g., Jean Deslandes dit champigny (a town near Paris), (2) military activity, e.g., Jean-Baptiste Leriche dit lasonde, a surgeon (from la sonde “the probe”), (3) surname alteration, e.g., Jacques Rivière dit larivière, (4) vegetation, e.g., Hubert Ranger dit laviolette (from la violette “the violet”), and (5) personal characteristic, e.g., Étienne Audibert dit lajeunesse (from la jeunesse “(the) youth”).

7 Non-military dit hagionyms whose origins remain unaccounted for are St-Amand first borne by Michel Lebret dit saint-amand from Dinan in Côtes-d’Armor, St. Come by Pierre Gagné dit saint-côme, grandson of Pierre from Igé in Orne, St-Cyr by Pierre Deshayes dit saint-cyr from an unknown location in France, St-Germain in part by Charles Lemaire dit saint-germain from Thurles in Ireland, St-Louis by Jean-Baptiste Gadiou dit saint-louis, son of Gilles from La Flotte in Charente-Maritime, St-Ours in part by Louis Béchet dit saint-ours, a descendant of Yves from an unknown location in France, and St-Sauveur by Pierre-Henri Dominé dit saint-sauveur from Vitry-le-François in Marne.

8 As estimated by Lépine, “70% of all our French ancestors were soldiers when they arrived in the country” (2004: 24).