Surname Saturday - Fleury

Many surnames have their origins in the natural world. Because it's the month of May, it seems appropriate to take a look at some floral surnames. One such name in my own family tree is the name Fleury. The name occurs in French Canada, but my ancestor with this name lived in Brittany, in what is now the department of Loire-Atlantique.  The name Fleury is an adjective derived from the noun fleur 'flower'.  In addition to a surname, Fleury is common as or as part of place names in France (see here).  The name was most likely applied to a place where flowers commonly bloomed.

My seventh great grandfather Pierre Fleury married Anne Guchet on May 4, 1756 in Saint-Jean-de-Boiseau.  The following excerpt from their marriage record gives information about the couple's parents and their places of origin.  Pierre Fleury's mother-in-law also fits the floral theme.

 ...pierre fleury fils de Louise gabrielle fleury sa mere, agé de dix neuf ans environ, du pelerin natif, et anne guchet fille de pierre guchet et de janne bouquet ses pere et mere de cette paroisse..

...Pierre Fleury son of Louise Gabrielle Fleury his mother, aged around nineteen years, native of Le Pelerin, and Anne Guchet daughter of Pierre Guchet and Jeanne Bouquet his father and mother of this parish...

Notice how only Pierre's mother is listed and that she has the same surname.  This probably indicates that Pierre was illegitimate.

Surname Saturday: Breton

St. Louis Cemetery #1, New Orleans, LA

This month I am taking a closer look at surnames that indicate a national, ethnic or regional origin.  Many French surnames indicate the region of origin of their bearers.  Before the French Revolution, France was divided into 40 provinces.  To a large extent, these provinces define the historical regions of France.  After the Revolution, France was reorganized with regions replacing provinces.  Although some of the names of provinces were kept as region names, the territories were changed.  For example, the large province of Normandy was divided into two separate regions, Upper Normandy and Lower Normandy.

Common surnames associated with provinces include Picard for Picardy (Fr. Picardie), Normand for Normandy (Fr. Normandie) and the topic of this post, Breton, along with the variants Lebreton and Le Breton (as seen in the inscription pictured above).  The surname Breton is noteworthy because the name can indicate both a geographical and an ethnic origin. Brittany is divided into two separate parts, Upper Brittany to the East and Lower Brittany to the West.  In Lower Brittany, a distinctly Celtic people persisted, maintaining their language and cultural.  In Upper Brittany, during the Middle Ages, the Breton language was slowly replaced by the Romance language, Gallo, which is closely related to French and other Romance varieties of Northern France. From the 15th century to the 19th century, the linguistic frontier was relatively stable between the two regions.  Thus, Breton carries a stronger ethnic connotation when applied to someone from Lower Brittany.  My own ancestors from Brittany are split evenly between the Breton-speaking Lower Brittany and French- and Gallo-speaking Upper Brittany.

However, my ancestors with the name Breton are from Paris.  My 10th great grandmother, Marguerite Breton, was born in Paris, immigrated to Quebec and married Nicolas Patenostre (Patenaude) in 1651.  However, it is not too surprising to find this name in Paris; we would expect to find names indicating a region of origin more outside the region than in it. Being a Breton is more notable in a place where everyone else is not also a Breton.  In the period between 1891 and 1915, the greatest number of Bretons are living in Paris (map).  Although the name is common in Finistère, it is relatively rare in the other departments which cover Lower Brittany.  Similarly, the largest numbers of Picards in the same period are found outside Picardy in Paris and the department of Seine-Maritime in Normandy (map). My ancestor's family presumably adopted the name Breton because the family originated in Brittany.

The "Real" Name

Have you ever had a relative correct you saying that your ancestor's "real name" was something other than what you have on the family tree or in your genealogical database?  Maybe this real name is the name that appears on a baptism record or the one that they preferred to be called.  Unfortunately, a name is not the same as a date.  An ancestor's birth date is an immutable fact.  Whether or not records are consistent or accurate, there is an objective birth date that can never change.  Names are much more changeable and contextually-defined facts.  I have a name that I use in official contexts and others I use in informal contexts.  You may have a nickname that family uses, one that friends use and one you use at work.  And these may change over time.

The proliferation of names is made even more maddening when other languages are added to the mix.  How can you decide what is the "real" name? Let's look at one example.

Case of Johann Georg Schöndorf
I have discussed my Schoendorf line before (here and here).  Records for this line are in French, German and Latin.  Records for Johann Georg Schöndorf who lived in the 1700s are in both Latin and French.  In his marriage record, a French record, he is "Jean George Schöndorf".

In his son's marriage record, a Latin record, he is listed as "Johannis Georgii Schöndorff".

There are two issues here.  First, the name is in Latin and, second, the name has a special form because it is possessive. This form is in the genitive case.  If we want to cite the Latin name, we should convert it to the nominative case, which is what is used as the default.  In this case the name would be "Johannes Georgius Schöndorf".  For more on Latin, check out this post.

But,  I know he spoke German, so what do we do? Do we convert the name to German or not?  It seems unlikely that he would use the Latin and French forms outside of records.  Fortunately, we have examples of the German name in his signature on the same two documents.

In this case it is probably safe to use the German form, but what if the only records you have are in Latin and not the local language?  Ultimately, you get to decide what name to use. The most important things to do are be consistent, so others will understand what you are doing, and recognize the reality that for some questions there is not always a clear or final answer. When you are transcribing a record, you should keep the name as close to what is found in the record and, to clarify, you can add a standardized name in brackets, such as "Jean George Schöndorf [Johann Georg Schöndorf]".

Surname Saturday - Lefebvre

Today's Surname Saturday post will round out the month of Smiths. So far, we have discussed English Smith, Slavic Kowatch and Breton Le Goff. This week we are going to stay in France, but turn to the French surname Lefebvre. French is a Romance language, one of Europe's "Big Three" language families together with Germanic and Slavic. The Romance languages have their origins in Latin.

The surname Lefenvre was carried to North America by early settlers of Quebec, including my wife's 10th great grandmother, Angélique Lefebvre, who also happens to be the mother-in-law of my 11th cousin once removed, Pierre Samson.

The ultimate origin of the name Lefebvre and variants like Lefèvre is the Latin word faber meaning "craftsman". You may recognize the root in English words of Latin origin like fabricate and fabric.  Through a process of semantic narrowing, the word took on the more specific meaning of a craftsman in metal. This term is no longer used in Modern French where we find forgeron. 

This name is mainly found in the north of France in Normandy and the regions of Picardy, Île-de-France, and Nord-Pas-de-Calais, areas that supplied many of the settlers of New France including a number of bearers of this name (See map).  You may also have noticed that this name includes the definite article "le".  Unlike Le Goff where the article is usually written as a separate word, Lefebvre is almost always written as a single word.  For more discussion of the use of article in French names, check this earlier post.

Finding online French records, Part 2: Navigating French departmental archives

Once you have found the webpage for the appropriate departmental or municipal archives (see here), the next step is to find the relevant information on the website.  To do this you should know a few basic phrases.  The first thing you want to find is the location of the online resources. The key phrases are archives en ligne "online archives" and archives numérisées "digitized archives", even just the terms en ligne "online" or numérisé(es) "digitized" might point you in the right direction.

Let's take a look at the Departmental Archives for Calvados in Normandy (here).  On the right side of the webpage you will find the following box:

You will want to click on the second item down "Les archives numérisées en ligne".  This will take you to a page that lists their online collections.  There are two sets of resources.  The resources of most interest to genealogists are in orange and unfortunately you must pay in order to access them ("Nos consultations payantes").  The three collections that require payment are:

• REGISTRES PAROISSIAUX ET D'ETAT CIVIL - Parish registers from the 16th century including baptism, marriage and burial records up to 1792 and civil registers since 1792  with birth, marriage and death records
• CADASTRE NAPOLEONIEN - Land maps first instituted by Napoleon
• LISTE NOMINATIVES - Censuses

These are three of the most common types of collections available on departmental archives websites.  The census, here "listes nominatives", will also sometimes be referred to as "recensements de population".  In some departments, these collections are free, but for Calvados a small payment is required. The rates (here) range from 2€ for two days to 200€ for a whole year.  Even if the collections are free, you may still need to register to use a departmental archives website.

Next, click the "consulter" button for "registres paroissiaux et d'état civil", probably the most important collection for genealogists.

 Now, let's take a look at the search form.

The first heading is "Vous connaissez le lieu?", "Do you know the place?".  In the first box you enter the commune you want to search for records in.  If you don't know what a commune is check this post. Under that box is a pull-down menu that will let you search by all the parishes and institutions in that commune.  For a large city you will have many choices, while a small commune may have only one parish.

Under the second heading you can search for a commune in an alphabetical list by clicking on the link in green.

Under the third heading, we can limit our search by date. You can put a single year in the box marked "Exacte" or a range starting with "Début" and ending with "Fin".

Finally, we have the heading "types d'actes", "types of records".  Here are the key terms:

• Baptême - Baptism
• Mariage - Marriage
• Sépulture - Burial
• Naissance - Birth
• Décès - Death
• Table décennale - (an index for civil records covering a ten year period)

When you are ready to search, make sure you hit "OK", not "ANNULER" which will clear the search box. Even if you have haven't paid yet, you can search and see what records they have; you just won't be able to view the images.  Play around and get a feel for the materials they have.  You can also try navigating other departmental archives with your new arsenal of words and phrases.

If you are still struggling you can use Google Translate, you simply need to enter the URL.  One limitation is that it will only translate regular text, not text in images. 

A tip for identifying the language of a document

When approaching a new document, the first thing you need to do is identify the language it is written in. Then, you'll be able to find an appropriate dictionary and other tools that will let you make sense of it. There are a number of ways to do this, but you often need look no further than the first three or four words.  Many records like birth, baptism and marriage records follow very common formats.  One feature of these documents is that they often begin with the date the event occurred or was recorded.  So, simply by knowing a few common expressions you can quickly and easily identify the language of a document.

My Schoendorf line lived for several generations in Peppenkum . Although now a part of Germany, this area was ruled at various times by both France and Bavaria.  Records for this predominantly Catholic area are written in at least three different languages, Latin, French and German, depending on the period and context of the document. For example, I have three different documents (all available at the Family History Library).  The first is from a marriage record in a church register from 1782 for Johann Georg Schoendorf and Catherine Conrad.
  

Source: Film 351837

The first words are "L'an mil".  L'an is a contraction of the French words Le, which is the definite article "the", and an, the word for "year". Mil is the word for "thousand".

Next is the marriage record for their son Johann Schoendorf and his wife Anna Maria Klinlger from 1817.

Source: Film 351839

The language has changed; in place of French we find the Latin phrase "Anno Domini milesimo".  Anno means "in the year".  If you just wanted to say "the year", you would use annus, but Latin has special endings that tell you what function the word plays (see this post).  In this case, the ending -o tells us that it means "in the year".  Domini means "of the Lord". Here the ending -i tell us that Dominus has a possessive function.  Finally, we have the word milesimo (usually millesimo).  For now, let's just say it means "thousand".  I have a post planned for dealing with Latin numbers, which are a bit complicated.

You may have noticed the similarities between the French and Latin words for year an and anno and those for thousand mil  and millesimo.  This is because French, like all Romance languages, descends from Latin.

The final record, from 1866, is the civil registration of the birth of Caspar Schoendorf, the grandson and great grandson of the above couples.

Source : Film 1057430

Once again we encounter a new language.  This time it's German.  The first four words are "Im Jahr ein tausend", which translates as "In the year one thousand".  This is almost a word-for-word translation of the English.  The only tricky part is the word "im" which combines the preposition in "in" with the definite article dem "the".

Because English is a Germanic language, you will notice the similarities between German and English.  The word Jahr, where the initial J is pronounced like English Y, is similar to the English word year, and tausend is very close to thousand.

The first few words in all three documents contain the same two words, "year" and "thousand".  Think of these as keywords; since you are very likely to encounter them in a document, they can help you identify the language.  It may not help for every record, but it is at least one way of narrowing down the possibilities.

Tombstone Tuesday - Jean Lacoste and Anne Courcelle

Jean Lacoste and his wife, Anne Courcelle, are entombed at St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The vault inscription is typical of French inscriptions found in this historic cemetery.  For the most part, it can be translated directly into English without much trouble.  The phrase "Ici Repose" is literally "Here Lies".  The only major difference between the French original and English translation is the use of the definite article before the date in French.  For example, we find "le 2 Juin 1785",  not just "2 Juin 1785". The abbreviated style is also very similar to that of English inscriptions described in an earlier post (here).

Past participles in French

This abbreviated style is achieved by using a "past participle".  In English this form is usually formed by adding -ed. In many cases it is exactly the same as the past tense (died vs. died).  However, in other cases it is distinct from the past tense, like born vs. bore, been vs. was/were, sung vs. sang, etc. In French you can often identify the past participle by the ending -é, although like English there are many exceptions.  In place of born we find né and in place of  died, décédé.  Another wrinkle is the fact that the past participle in French changes depending on whether it describes a man or a woman.  The feminine form of the past participle is created by adding -e.  Thus, for Anne Courcelle we have née and décédée, the feminine forms.  

This pattern for inscriptions can be extended to other languages, especially languages closely related to French such as Italian and Spanish.  In an Italian inscription in the same cemetery (here),  we find the same basic style using participles.  Like French, the Italian past participles also have special masculine and feminine forms, nato and nata (feminine) "born" and morto and morta (feminine) "died".

Ici Repose

JEAN LACOSTE,

né á Bordeaux le 2 Juin 1785
décédé le 10 Aout 1850.
son épouse
ANNE COURCELLE,
née le 21 Juin 1778.
décédée le  10 Juillet 1857.

Here Lies
JEAN LACOSTE,
born in Bourdeaux June 2, 1785
died August 10, 1850
his wife
ANNE COURCELLE
born June 21, 1778
died July 10, 1857

Parish registers in Quebec

Researchers working on French Canadian lines have access to a number of excellent online resources , including many primary documents. Catholic parish registers have been preserved to a remarkable degree and are easily available. The most convenient way to search the parish registers is through the Drouin collection available on ancestry.com. The collection of vital and church records covers the Catholic Church and other denominations from 1621 through the 1940s, and in a few cases as late as the 1960s. The parish registers are fully indexed, but as always with French Canadian records be prepared for the variations that occur with French Canadian surnames described in earlier posts (here and here).

Parish registers can also also be accessed on FamilySearch.org (here). These records do not require a subscription, but are not fully indexed, so you will have to know the place and date when the baptism, marriage or burial took place in order to find the record. This collection also only goes up to 1900, so you will need to go to ancestry.com for later dates.

Both collections cover very similar territory, but don't assume that they are identical. Take the marriage record for my 6th great grandparents, Jean Baptiste Halé and Véronique Paradis, who were married in Lauzon on April 12, 1779. The quality of the digital images in this case differs considerably.

Ancestry.com:
FamilySearch.org:
Transcription:

d'Augustin halé pere de L'Epoux
of Augustin Halé father of the husband

The second image makes it much easier to identify the name of the groom's father.

A final resource that can be very helpful in navigating these records is the PRDH which has a database called Repertory of vital events which covers many of the same records during the period from 1621 to 1799. The records in the database are extracts, not originals. The main advantage of this site is the standardization of surnames which makes it easier to search the records than at ancestry.com where you not only have to deal with numerous variants, but many poor transcriptions. You simply plug a variant into the name standardization tool and then use the standardized surname to perform your searches. Another advantage is the inclusion of marriage contracts from notarial records when the marriage was absent or incomplete in parish records and also the inclusion of a variety of other records. For a more complete description of the database go here. These records are available through a subscription.

The little bits, spelling and alphabetization

Not all parts of a name are created equally. Many names include function words like articles and prepositions. For English speakers, this type of formation is somewhat unfamiliar; English names don't include the definite article the or the prepositions of. However, in other languages, surnames that include these words are very common.

Names that begin with function words create a number of difficulties for genealogists due to their often inconsistent treatment. There are three main issues you have to consider.

One or more words? There is a lot of variation in terms of whether the parts remain separate or are written as a single word. The preposition van "of" is characteristic of many Dutch names, including the 8th president of the United States, Martin Van Buren. It originally indicated the place of origin of the bearer of the surname and in Dutch it is left uncapitalized, Vincent van Gogh, literally Vincent of Gogh. In contrast, the Vanderbilt family, a prominent American family of Dutch origin, treats the name as a single word instead of van der Bilt "of de Bilt". You may also find in some cases a compromise where the name is written as a single word, but with internal capitalization, like VanBuren.

Disappearing words. The second issue is that from generation to generation or even record to record the function word may disappear and then reappear. For example, on the marriage record of my 6th great grandfather, Jean Baptiste Blais, his mother is listed as "marie marguerite roi":


However, on her own marriage record from June 13, 1726 in Saint-Vallier, Quebec, she is listed as "margueritte Le Roy":


Both records are available as a part of the Drouin Collection on ancestry.com.

Alphabetization. The final issue is how these words are alphabetized. You will find rules for alphabetization if you consult the MLA style guide or the Chicago Manual of Style, but don't expect these rules to be consistently followed. Be prepared to consider all options. This has been of special relevance to my research into my ancestors in Brittany.

In Lower Brittany names with a definite article are everywhere. My great grandmother, who was born in Nantes, had ancestry split between Lower and Upper Brittany. Her mother's ancestors were all from Lower Brittany, while her father's ancestors were from Upper Brittany. The division between the two parts of Brittany is partially linguistic. In Lower Brittany, Breton, a Celtic language, dominated, while, in Upper Brittany, Gallo and French, Romance languages, were the norm.

This linguistic divide is also reflected in the naming practices. I have 14 different surnames with the definite article Le among my ancestors in Lower Brittany, including Le Bourhis, Le Hiaric, Le Joudec and Le Bacquer. In contrast, I have yet to encounter such a name among my ancestors in Upper Brittany. In indexes from Lower Brittany, such as those from the commune of Plouguernével where many of my ancestors lived, names with an article are typically alphabetized by disregarding the article. For example, the name Le Bourhis is listed under "B" and is written as "Bourhis (le)". However, in indexes in Nantes where many in the family later migrated, the name Le Bourhis is found alphabetized by the letter "L" and is simply listed as "Le Bourhis". This does make some sense. In Plouguernével, because of how common names with the article are, it makes more sense to disregard it to avoid half the names being in the "L" section, but in Nantes where it is less common, this is less important.

In my own records, I generally take these names as a whole and just list the surname as "Le Bourhis". I think this is simpler and less confusing.

Beyond French 101: It's all relatives

What you need to know depends on what you are using a language for. Fortunately, what you need to know to read a record is often much less than you would need in other contexts, like having conversation. Even if you can't read every word, you can still get a lot out of records. The key for making effective use of records is knowing the right structures and vocabulary.

Not surprisingly one of the most important vocabulary domains for a genealogist is the terminology used to describe different relatives, what linguists call "kinship terms". If you took a language class in school, you probably know the basic terms for the members of a nuclear family, such as "father", "mother", "son", "daughter", "brother" and "sister". You may even know a few others like "grandmother", "grandfather", "uncle" and "aunt". These are all essential terms and, if you are new to a language, This is the place to start.

Take the following excerpt from the marriage record from Québec City of my 9th great grandfather, Guillaume Paradis, which is available on ancestry.com in the Drouin Collection:

Guillaume Paradis fils de Pierre Paradis et Barbe Guion ses pere et mere
Guillaume Paradis son of Pierre Paradis and Barbe Guion his father and mother

In just a few words, you encounter three basic kinship terms fils "son", père "father" and mère "mother" in a somewhat redundant, but very common, formulation. Don't worry too much about the accent marks; they are not that common in handwritten documents.

The basic kinship terms in French include:

père father
mère mother
fils son
fille daughter
frère brother
sœur sister
grand-père grandfather
grand-mère grandmother
oncle uncle
tante aunt

Going further: In-laws
While these terms are essential to your genealogical research, you will encounter other relations in your research that may be of great help. These include cousins, nephews, nieces and in-laws, who may be listed as sponsors or witnesses on different records. '

One of the more useful terms I have found in dealing with civil records in France is beau-frère "brother-in-law". On the civil marriage record of my fourth great grandparents, Louis Charles Le Bourhis and Marie Anne Le Bacquer, a brother-in-law is listed:

En présence de Michel Le Corre âgé de vingt sept ans, profession de cultivateur à Plouguernével départment des Côtes du Nord qui déclaré être beau frere du contractant
In (the) presence of Michel Le Corre aged 27, profession of farmer in Plouguernével department of Côtes du Nord who declared (himself) to be the brother-in-law of the contractant

The reason that this particular relationship is very useful is because many indexes to marriage records are listed only by the groom. This particular record allowed me to search a table décennale, an index to French civil records which covers a ten year period, and find the marriage record for Louis Charles' sister, Margueritte Le Bourhis, in the online archives for the department of Côtes d'Armor. This is one good way of finding records for your ancestors' female relatives.

The word beau-frère also illustrates the way words for in-laws are formed in French. All you need to do is add beau before the appropriate kinship term. You may already know this word which means "beautiful". For women you need to use the feminine form belle. There are also plural forms for both masculine (beaux) and feminine (belles). Now, if you already know the basic terms, you can add six more:

beau-père father-in-law (pl. beaux-pères)
belle-mère mother-in-law (pl. belles-mères)
beau-fils son-in-law (pl. beaux-fils)
belle-fille daughter-in-law (pl. belles-filles)
beau-frère brother-in-law (pl. beaux-frères)
belle-soeur sister-in-law (pl. belles-soeur)

Surname Saturday - Pageot

One challenge in researching French Canadian ancestors is dealing with the often wide variations in the spelling of a name. In French, it is often possible to represent the same sound in many different ways. This is especially true at the ends of word, where final letters are "silent", that is they are not pronounced.

Take the name "Pageot", the surname of my 4th great grandmother in my matrilineal line, Marcelline Pageot (1822-1867). I have found this name spelled at least four different ways in records relating to my direct ancestors: Pageot, Pajeau, Pajot and Pajeot. In this case, there seems to be very little pattern to which spelling is used. The first spelling is the most common and is found throughout my family's time in Canada. The following time line shows the variations in spelling over time.

1675 - Pageot
1703 - Pajot
1731 - Pageot
1731 - Pajeot
1755 - Pajeot
1785 - Pajot
1794 - Pageot
1820 - Pajeau
1822 - Pajeau
1839 - Pageot
1841 - Pageot
1850 - Pageot
1861 - Pajot
1867 - Pageot

This kind of variation can make it very difficult to decide on what spelling to use. Deciding on a standard can be helpful for organizing your research, but it is not always clear what the best choice is. Not only does the spelling often vary from generation to generation, but can vary over the lifetime of a single individual. For example, this surname is spelled three different ways on records for Marcelline Pageot. "Pajeau" on her baptismal record, "Pajot" on the 1861 Census of Canada, and "Pageot" on both marriage and burial records. The choice of spelling you use in your own records is a somewhat arbitrary choice. In this case, I have used "Pageot" because it seems the most frequent and is closest to the form used by relatives who immigrated to the United States. These relatives added a "g" to the spelling Paggeot.

Another possibility is to use the standardized forms of the surnames established by the PRDH and developed to facilitate use of their databases. A useful tool on the PRDH website allows you to enter a variant and find the standardized form (here). This tool can also be used in other helpful ways. Look at the results for my search on PAGEOT. As you can see the standardized form is PAGEAU. Notice that over twenty different variants are listed. Now, look at rightmost column, it shows how frequent each variant is. The three most common variants are PAJEOT, PAJOT and PAGEOT. You can use this information to do smarter searchers. Start with the most common variants and work your way down.

The Genealogy of Writing Systems

What do the surnames Staszak, Schöndorf, Chêneau and Jaroš have in common? Beside being in my family tree, they all share a common sound. Polish "sz", German "sch", French "ch" and Czech "š" are the same sound, the sound represented in English by the combination "sh" or in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the symbol "ʃ". Why are there so many ways of representing this sound in different languages?

To answer this question, we must understand that writing systems, like people, have genealogies. In this case, all these writing system have a common ancestor, Latin. The reason there are so many different ways of representing the "sh" sound is that this sound is not found in Latin. As the Latin alphabet came to be adopted for other languages, people came up with ways of representing sounds not found in Latin.

There are four ways to do this. The examples below show some of the many ways that the "sh" sound is represented.

1. Combine letters to represent new sounds (Polish "sz" German "sch" and English "sh")
2. Modify existing letters by adding extra symbols called diacritics (Czech "š" and Turkish "ş")
3. Use a letter in a new way (Maltese "x")
4. Create a new symbol or borrow one from a different writing system (I can't think of any examples for this sound, but there are cases for other sounds like Old Norse þ for the "th" sound in "thorn")

In many cases, especially with languages without a long written history, the new writing system was often created by an individual or a committee. However, in languages with long written histories, things are much more complicated. For example, French is an ancestor of Latin in two ways. It owes not only its alphabet to Latin, but the language itself. The "ch" which represents the "sh" sound developed from an earlier "k" sound, or hard "c". The development in this cases was more gradual and less deliberate.

Although we often assume a deep connection between a language and how it is written, this is perhaps the aspect of a language that is most easily changed. Turkey did away with the Arabic script in the first half of the twentieth century and adopted a modified Latin script. In some cases, a single language or two very closely related languages may adopt two different systems, like Serbian (Cyrillic script) and Croatian (Latin script) or Hindi (Devanagari script) and Urdu (Arabic script).

For genealogists, an awareness of these differences between scripts can come in handy. A single surname may be spelled in many ways depending on the context. For a German name starting with "sch" like Schulz, don't be surprised if it is rendered by an English speaker as Shulz. Things are especially complicated for a language like Czech. A name like Jaroš may be spelled Jarosch, as it frequently was when Bohemia was a part of the German-language-dominated Austrian Empire. In Poland, this name might become Jarosz and, in the English-speaking world, Jarosh. Knowing something about the history of your family and where they're from and the languages of the region can help you better search for your ancestors.

Surname Saturday - Le Bourhis

Genealogy rarely provides simple answers to the question of who our ancestors were. We want something that we can hold on to, something that changes the way we see ourselves. We often embrace part of our ancestry. We try some recipes, take a dance class or start learning a new language. At the same time, we ignore the complexity that is there. We may downplay other parts of our family's past. Even in those cases that seem most clear cut, you may find surprises.

These complexities are sometime found even in the names of our ancestors. For all of human history, people have been moving around and mixing. Evidence for this is written in to our DNA and often displayed in surnames. Most names cannot be simply described by phrases like "an English name" or "a Russian name". Sometimes, names will even combine elements from more than one language.

One such surname is that of my second great grandmother, Marie Eugénie Le Bourhis. Marie Eugénie was born in Nantes, France on August 26, 1879. Her parents were from the department of Côtes-du-Nord (now Côtes d'Armor). Her father was born in Plouguernével, where many generations of Le Bourhis had lived before him.

The origin of the name is complicated. The name in its current form is clearly French; it includes the French definite article Le "the" and the name follows French orthography (spelling conventions). The name itself, however, has its origin in the Breton language, the Celtic language of Brittany. The area these ancestors were from was Breton-speaking. Bourhis comes from the Breton word bourc'hiz ['burxis], which means "people who live in a small market town". The word bourc'h by itself is the word for "village" or "small market town". Notice the combination c-apostrophe-h. It is used to indicate a velar fricative like the German ch in Bach. Without the apostophy ch is pronounced like English sh.

There is a suffix -ad in Breton which is used to indicate an inhabitant of a place. For example, Brittany is Breizh and so breizhad is one way of referring to a person from Brittany. In the plural, -ad is replaced by -iz and so breizhiz means Bretons. Bourc'hiz follows this same pattern with the singular form bourc'had, and thus means "inhabitants of a small market town". Bourc'hiz can also have the meaning of "middle-class" or "bourgeois".

There is one further layer to this name. The Breton word for a small market town is a Germanic borrowing. This word is related to the -burg of Hamburg and the -bury of Kingsbury (discussed here). This borrowing occurred long ago, perhaps before the Bretons migrated to France from Great Britain. The same Anglo-Saxons invasions that brought this word may have also caused the migration.

So, when someone asks what kind of name Le Bourhis is, you can simply state that it is Franco-Germano-Celtic.

Online French Records - Nantes

Thanks to my discovery of online records in France, I have had a couple of very productive months of genealogy. The branch that had long been the one that I knew least about has grown substantially over the last several weeks and continues to do so. This is the branch of my great grandmother who I wrote about in an earlier post. She was born in Nantes, France.

Many French records are kept in the departmental archives. France is divided into 100 departments. The department is one of the most important administrative divisions. If you are looking for records, you will have to figure out what department your ancestors lived in. Nantes is in the department of Loire-Atlantique (formerly Loire-Inférieure). The departmental archives have an extensive collection of online records, including Parish records of baptism, marriage and burial from the 1500s to 1792 and civil records of birth, marriage and death from 1792 to the beginning of the 20th century. In order to do effective research you will also have to find out the commune that your ancestors lived in. The commune is the smallest administrative unit and the most important for tracking down the records.

My great grandmother was born in the commune of Nantes in the department of Loire-Atlantique. However, in this case, the commune records are not kept in the departmental archives like the rest of the communes of this department. Nantes, the largest city, has its own municipal archives with the same types of records in addition to a number of other online collections of records, pictures, maps and photographs. Several indexes are provided for locating records. You should start with the table décennale which provides a ten-year indexes for records. For my great grandmother, my search for her birth record would start with the table décennale of births (naissances) for 1893-1902. On page 212, you will find the entry for Suzanne Jeanne Gardahaut. This entry will point you to record #343 in the register for the 6th canton in the city of Nantes for the year 1900. With this information I can begin my search of the appropriate register and find the birth record. In this same set of records, you will also find the birth record for my uncle Léon Eugène Gardahaut (pictured above). However, because he was born before my great great grandparents married, he is listed under his mother's surname, Le Bourhis.

Once you have found a record, it will often give information that will help in finding other records. For someone who has done genealogy mainly in the US, you will probably be pleasantly surprised by how informative the records are.

Surname Saturday - Gardahaut

One of the ironies of my own research is that the great-grandparent who I knew the best is the one whose ancestry I know the least about. Suzanne Jeanne Gardahaut was born on Nov. 9, 1900 in Nantes, France and lived actively into her nineties. She was my one connection to something exotic in my own family background. Not only was she French, but she was something more, she was a Breton, from the culturally distinct region of Brittany in northwest France. This fascinated me, largely because it was something that made me feel unique. When it came time to make a display for French night, I proudly did it on Brittany. When I had the chance, I even took a course on Breton, the wonderful Celtic language of Brittany, which is related to Welsh and Cornish.

Along with this unusual heritage (at least where I lived), she also had an unusual surname. The name is absent from US Census (my great-grandmother married soon after she immigrated and is listed under her husband's name). The only historical record for the name on FamilySearch.org is my great-grandmother's ship record. The only place left to look is in France. One useful tool is the La France de noms on the genealogie.com website which can give you an idea of the distribution of surnames in France. The Gardahauts, few that there are, are clustered in or near Brittany in the northwest corner of France on the map for the period 1891-1915.

The meaning of the names is fairly obscure. One theory put forward on the GeneaNet (here) holds that the name is from the phrase garde à eau referring to a reservoir or mill race or is related to a place name Gardehaut in Côtes d'Armor. The evidence seems mainly speculative in either case.

In the company of saints

It is useful to learn the words for "saint" in the languages of your ancestors. Saint names occur in surnames, church names and many place names. Knowing these words can help you make sense of records by letting you identify the names of people and places. In English, these terms are fairly simple; we use the same form for both male and female saints and have a single abbreviation St. In many European languages, there are different forms for different genders, and sometimes abbreviations and other special forms before names.

Saint in Spanish
In Spanish, the masculine form for "saint" is santo and the feminine form is santa. However, when followed by a name, the masculine form is usually the reduced form San, as in San Francisco (Saint Francis). Some exceptions with the full form include Santo Domingo and Santo Tómas.

Saint in French
In French, the masculine form is written the same as in English, saint, and the feminine form has an extra "e", sainte. In saints names, these are typically abbreviate to St. and Ste., respectively. These abbreviated forms are very common in French Canadian place names and even in the US, such as St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve in Missouri. Labels on records in the Drouin Collection ($ Ancestry) point to the towns of St.-Evariste-de-Forsyth (Pope Evaristus) and Ste.-Marie (St. Mary).

Saint in Polish
While the words for "saint" in French, Spanish and many other languages are quite similar to English, in other languages they are unrecognizable. Take German Heilige (hl.), Albanian shenjtori (Sh.), Czech Svatý (Sv.), Finnish Pyhä or Polish Święta (św.).

Let's look at an obituary from a Polish newspaper in Chicago. We know that names of saints will be preceded by the abbreviation św. We can also guess that an obituary might mention a church or a cemetery. Looking up "church" and "cemetery" in a Polish dictionary gives us kościół and cmentarz.

We can identify four separate "saints". Having looked up the words for church and cemetery, we can make out a Church of "św. Jana Bożego" and a cemetery of "św. Marii". Using an educated guess and confirming it, we find that the church is St. John of God and the cemetery is St. Mary, a cemetery on the South Side of Chicago. The other "saints" are not as clear, but a little more digging reveals the first saint to be St. Casimir, which is related to a society he belonged to, and the fourth saint is not really a saint, but refers to the "blessed" sacraments. This points to the original meaning of "saint" which is "holy". English is actually unusual in the fact that it distinguishes between holy people (saints) and other holy things (Holy Family, Holy Trinity, etc.).

Dealing with analytic structures in French

In my last post I talked about how understanding how languages are organized can help you make sense of a document in an unfamiliar language. Today, I want to talk about tackling a document in French, a language with many analytic structures. In analytic structures, meanings are indicated by separate words, not by changing the words.

Languages like this are generally easier to deal with, because the word you see in a document is more likely to have the same form in a dictionary. For example, possessives in Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) have the same basic pattern as English possessives with of ("the daughter of Prudence Martin"). Like English, the possessed person or thing comes before the preposition and the possessor comes after it.

The prepositions used in the Romance languages are related to each other, so you can learn several for the price of one. For example,

French de
Spanish de
Portuguese de
Italian di

This construction is especially useful for genealogists because it is often used to indicate a family relation ("the son of John Smith").

Knowing just a few small things can yield a tremendous amount of genealogical information to those willing to brave the French language and handwriting. Take, for example, a collection of records like the Drouin Collection ($ Ancestry). One doesn't need to understand everything, just be able to pick out the interesting genealogical tidbits.

The example above is taken from the marriage record of Augustin Blais and Marie-Louise Mercier in 1800. The underlined section says:

augustin blais majeur fils de jean baptiste blais

This translates word for word into English as

Augustin Blais grown son of Jean Baptiste Blais

With a good dictionary you can get a good idea of the content simply by looking up each word. The only potentially tricky part is the word majeur "major". Here the meaning is "of age" or "grown". In English we use the word minor in the same context ("a minor child"), but not so much major (although the term of majority is used somewhat archaically to mean "adulthood"). If you use Google Translate, you will simply have majeur translated as "major". However, if you use a decent online dictionary, you will see that it can also mean "of (legal) age".

Next week, we will turn to the much more complicated example of synthetic structures in Latin. In Latin, it is not enough simply to look up the words in similar cases; you have to learn something about the grammar first.