French Names

WARNING: Do not cite this page as a reference. This page is on this wiki to make the content "searchable" and easier to find. If you find the information you seek here, go to the original sources (generally linked) to verify the information and use them for your documentation. Contact the editor-in-chief, Sofya la Rus, if there are copyright concerns or other issues.  sofya at calontiri dot info 

Compound Names:

• From one of the S. Gabriel report 2264 "Compound given names like <Jean-Paul> weren't common in France in our period, but examples appeared in the Provencal-speaking south as early as the 12th century [7, 8, 9]. Many early examples were patronymic, i.e. a man called <Jean-Arnaud> was often the son of <Jean>. We haven't seen period examples in the north, though." - http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/showfinal.cgi?2264+0

• Caveats per Aryanhwy:

I have found a few compound given names at the end of the 16th C in French; in Gascon, you can find a few (but they are formed from a small, fixed set of elements) from as early as the 13th C.

Also, the compound given names that you DO find in northern French tend to be "obvious" choices -- e.g., <Jean Baptiste> (http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/database/alphalist.php?canonical=John+Baptist ) or <Jules Cezar> (http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/database/alphalist.php?canonical=Julius+Caeser )

The question of whether the hyphen was used is more tricky. Many manuscripts didn't use any type of accents, hyphenation, etc., and often it's hard to tell if the hyphen in a modern printed text is one that's been added by the editor or not.

Sources:

Frankish and French Names at Academy of St. Gabriel "Medieval Names Archive" - http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/french.shtml

Database of medieval names (from the Medieval Names Archive) - http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/database/
Archive of St. Gabriel reports - http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/archive.cgi

Laurel Name Articles -http://www.facebook.com/l/SAQFwqGUp/heraldry.sca.org/names.html%23france http://heraldry.sca.org/names.html#france

IGI Searches, batches beginning with C, J, K, M (except M17 and M18), or P are acceptable - https://familysearch.org/search/collection/igi

1292 Paris Census:

• Colm Dubh -
  • Given Names - http://heraldry.sca.org/names/paris.html and
  • Occupational Bynames - http://heraldry.sca.org/names/parisbynames.html
• Aryanhwy's article - http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/french/1292paris.pdf

Dictionnaire des noms de famille en Wallonie et a Bruxelles

Morice, Hyacinthe. Mémoires Pour Servir De Preuves A L'Histoire Ecclesiastique Et Civile de Bretagne. Vol. 1. Paris: Charles Osmont. 1742. http://books.google.com/books?id=8qJFAAAAcAAJ&q=Geoffroi

Uckhelman, Sara. IN PROGRESS: Bynames in Medieval France. http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/french/frenchbynames.pdf

From Pelican: Some Name Resources This month, I am covering Gallica, the online site for the Bibliothèque nationale de France (http://gallica.bnf.fr ). This site includes digitized books, manuscripts, and prints from within and after our period. Some are simple scans, particularly the older, handwritten manuscripts, and others allow full text searching. The site is available in French, German, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and is especially useful for locating French, Italian, and Latin language documents. To search using the (mostly) English version of the site, click on the link called Advanced Search next to the search field. From here, users can specify their search parameters, such as the date range, where in the document a search term must be found, the desired language, and the type of document. To cast the widest net, I typically use the top search field for my search term, change the location to Text, and add a final publishing date of 1650. Once you have searched for something, you see thumbnails of the resulting documents on the right and additional search filters in the left pane. The right pane gives information on the document such as whether it has fully indexed text, as well as a link to the full bibliographic record (Detailed information). Once you open a document, there is a vertical bar on the left called Module de recherche. Clicking on the small arrow there opens a pop-up that allows searching within a document for the text you want, as well as providing links to the pages with the desired text. If full text search is not available for that document (i.e., it is just an image of each page, with no OCR), this is stated in the pop-up. In addition, there are buttons to allow zooming and navigation within the document. The Detailed information link near the upper right gives the title, author, publication date and location, and other information. Permanent links to the document and the page of interest are available at the bottom of the page, and these URLs can be copied and pasted into the documentation for a submission. You can also take a screenshot or just download a document or portion of a document. To download, click on the Download/Print link near the upper right, select options like the file type, and hit the Envoyer ("Send") button. A link to the downloaded file will be provided in a new tab or browser window. http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2014/06/14-06cl.html

SENA Appendix A: Patterns That Do Not Need Further Documentation...

http://heraldry.sca.org/sena.html#AppendixA (as of 12 October 2013)

French

	Double Given Names	Locative	Patronymic	Other relationship	Descriptive/Occupational	Dictus	Double Bynames	Order
Frankish
French	Late	Phrase (see notes), unmarked, or inn sign name	Marked, unmarked are more common	widow, other	Yes; may use article le, la, l', les or un/une or omit it	Yes; usually combining surnames using dit	Yes; second byname is usually locative; double surnames are rare	given+by, given+byname+locative, given+byname dit byname
Occitan/Provenç	Late	Phrase (see notes), unmarked	Marked, unmarked	widow, other	Yes; may use article le, la, li, l', les or un/une or omit it	Yes; usually combining surnames using alias	Yes; but rare for men; second name usually locative	given+byname, given+byname+locative, given+byname aliasbyname

Notes: 

All patterns in Frankish must be documented.

Acute accents may be written or omitted, as long as they are used consistently. Other diacritics must be documented to be used, as they were rare in period. Capitalization patterns are inconsistent, but combinations of lower and uppercase elements must be documented.

French: Locatives may be derived from place names, in the form de X (or d'X, if X starts with a vowel); from generic toponyms, with du X, de la X, ordes X; or from signs, with au Z, àa Z, or aus/aux Z.

Occitan: Marked locatives look like those from French; inn sign names have not been found in Occitan to date.

Appendix C: Regional Naming Groups and Their Mixes

http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/sena.html#AppendixC

Regional Groups:	By Time Period:	Languages Included In This Group:	Can Be Combined With Groups:
French	550-1100	Frankish, French, Occitan/Provencal, Gascon, etc.	Dutch, English/Welsh, German, Iberian, Italian, Scandinavian
"	1100-1600	French, Occitan/Provencal, Gascon, etc.	Dutch, English/Welsh, German, Iberian, Italian

Precedents:

Precedents of the SCA College of Arms - http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/precedents.html
Morsulus Heralds Website - http://www.morsulus.org/ (to search the LoARs and Precedents)

Use the above links to be sure any precedents listed below haven't been superseded by newer precedents.

Collected Precedents of the SCA: French/Frankish -
http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/French.html

January 2006 - The use of the circumflex in French spellings

The issue of whether the circumflex accent mark was used in period French spellings was raised several times this letter. This diacritical mark, which resembles a carat (^) over a vowel, is used in modern French to indicate a missing consonant, usually an s, after the marked vowel. While some historians suggest that this accent mark was introduced into use in French writing in the 16th C, it does not become common until the 18th C. The first edition of Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, published in 1694, does not use the circumflex. In addition, the College has found no evidence for the general use of the circumflex in French writing during our period. Therefore, we must conclude that modern French spellings that use the circumflex are not representative of period French forms. While words that can be found with this mark in original period texts may be registered using this mark, French words that use the circumflex are not otherwise registerable.

• http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2006/01/06-01cl.html

WARNING: Do not cite this page as a reference. This page is on this wiki to make the content "searchable" and easier to find. If you find the information you seek here, go to the original sources (generally linked) to verify the information and use them for your documentation. Contact the editor-in-chief, Sofya la Rus, if there are copyright concerns or other issues.  sofya at calontiri dot info