GEN-FR-L Archives

From: "Janey E. Joyce" <>
Subject: Re: dit/de "Translation"
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 15:37:15 -0600

Dwight Kilpatrick wrote:
I am doing some research on my mothers' family surname HUOT
apparently it was originally written HUOT dit St.Laurent
which if my slightly unused French means Huot spoken as/says St.Laurent
Yet, family oral tradition says that it was HUOT de St.Laurent
which I read (in todays English to mean) Huot of St.Laurent, or Huot of
the St.Lawrence
Also, family oral tradition also shows/tells how some of the Family are
now Huot, while some are now St.Laurent ????

dit names are sort of nicknames, but more significant. Individuals adopted
them for different reasons. French soldiers frequently had dit names as in
Jean Colon dit La Violette. They might have been added to distinguish one
branch of a family from another, or two families of the same name from one
another. They sometimes referred to the place from which someone had come i.e.
- Marin Janot dit Lachapelle immigrated to Canada from La Chapelle-Monthodon.
- Florent B(u)isson simply used the B(u)isson name, but his brother Gervais
added dit Sainte-Come to his name.
- Jean B(u)isson added dit Provencal to his name.
- Rene Bisson added dit Lepine.
And, yes, these names sometimes did evolve into surnames, so it is not rare
to find one branch of a family using the original surname and another using
the dit name as a surname. Family names just weren't as fixed in the 17th
century as they are now: no one had drivers' licenses, Social Security
numbers etc. So, if you wanted to change your name for some reason or
another, you just did it.

This thread:

• Re: dit/de "Translation" by "Janey E. Joyce" <>