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 - 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.