A 1471 land record rented by Barthelemy Hugon dit Jarret which is called Bartelemeo Hugonis alias Jarreti in this record and some others. There was another Jarret in the area at this time with another dit name, so we can say the dit name was given, in that case, to distinguish the 2 different families. Barthelemy was living in Dauphine, like many soldiers of Carignan Regiment who went Quebec in 1665‑1668. While they were not the only ones nor the first to use dit names in New France, it seems those soldiers are responsible for the great extent the dit names reached in Quebec compared to France, Acadia or Louisiana . This would explain, for example, why there is a concentration of families with dit names around Lac St‑Pierre where seigneuries belonged often to retired officers from Carignan regiment (Vercheres, Sorel, Contrecoeur, etc. to name a few).

The derivation of a dit name comes from a number of areas such as:

· Surname used in the army (can also be combined with another reason)

· Place of origin (Breton, Langlois, Langevin, etc.)

· Land owned or inhabited by an ancestor (Beauregard is an example)

· The full name of the ancestor (Gaston Guay ‑> Gastonguay ‑> Castonguay)

· The first name of an ancestor (Vincent, Robert, etc.)

· Keeping the original name (in local language) during the process of standardizing names to French

· Miscellaneous

Denomination in Old Quebec

As they naturally fell under the laws and customs of France of the Ancien Régime, inhabitants of the St. Lawrence Valley in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all had a family name and a first name. Children inherited their father’s family name, and men transmitted this name to their children. Married women kept their family name at birth, at least in religious, administrative and legal documents.

These customs have played in favour of Quebec genealogy because they facilitate the identification of people by name. Nevertheless, practical problems do arise. In particular, spelling was not standardized, and both family and first names could be spelled in several different ways. Although first names can generally be recognized fairly easily, this is often not the case for family names. Data gathered from old documents can be difficult to read because letters can be confused, and the problem is complicated further because a number of names are similar – Boucher and Baucher, for example. Because most people were illiterate, their names come to us via an intermediary and were submitted to the vagaries of pronunciation, regional accents, and other factors. Added to this are the inevitable typos at the data-entry stage. Therefore, it is not surprising that a name may at least be written in many different ways, if it is not in fact confused with another.

Another problem with denomination concerns the use of nicknames, often referred to as "dit names", because they are introduced in French by the word "dit" meaning "said", which abound in the nominative history of old Quebec. They have many origins: military nickname, sobriquet related to a physical characteristic, immigrant’s place of origin, name of fief for nobles, mother’s family name, father’s first name, and so on. Some go back to the ancestor, while others are introduced by descendants; some are transmitted, others not; some belong to an entire family line, while others concern only a single branch. In short, it’s a real hodgepodge! From a practical point of view, an individual can be designated by a nickname at just about any time, and no rules can be made to predict when.

Frequency	Name	Nickname
3	DUMONT	BIGNON
2	DUMONT	BOISSEAU
1	DUMONT	BOUCHER
4	DUMONT	BRETON
1	DUMONT	CHAMPAGNE
1	DUMONT	CRESSE
3	DUMONT	DEBLAGNAC
1	DUMONT	DEBLENAC
1	DUMONT	DEVARDILLE
1	DUMONT	DEVELLAINE
1	DUMONT	DIEURAY
2	DUMONT	DUPUY
1	DUMONT	FLAMAND
1	DUMONT	FOULON
1	DUMONT	GUERAI
224	DUMONT	GUERET
1	DUMONT	GUERTIN
1	DUMONT	HERBEIN
1	DUMONT	HERBIN
1	DUMONT	ISABELLE
1	DUMONT	LACASSE
1	DUMONT	LADRIERE
2	DUMONT	LAFLEUR
3	DUMONT	LAGROSSETESTE
77	DUMONT	LAMBERT
16	DUMONT	LAVIOLETTE
15	DUMONT	POITEVIN
2	DUMONT	QUERETTE
1	DUMONT	QUERRET
1	DUMONT	RAGAUX
1	DUMONT	ROGUIN
1	DUMONT	SENSAR
1	DUMONT	STJOSEPH
1	DUMONT	THOMAS

Source: PRDH website

Most Frequent First Names

Among Catholics, choice of first name wasn’t left to chance or parents’ imagination. On the contrary, the church liked to control the attribution of first names to ensure that on the day they were baptised, children received the name of a saint who would guide them throughout their life. In the Rituel du Diocèse de Québec, which laid out the rules to follow for writing baptismal, marriage, and burial certificates in Quebec, Monsignor de Saint-Vallier stipulated, "The Church forbids Priests from allowing profane or ridiculous names to be given to the child, such as Apollon, Diane, etc. But it commands that the child be given the name of a male or female Saint, depending on its sex, so that it can imitate the virtues and feel the effects of God’s protection." A list of accepted names – 1,251 for boys and 373 for girls – was published in an appendix to the Rituel.

As well as a strong religious flavour, these rules resulted in a high concentration of relatively few first names in New France. As in France of the Ancien Régime, the names Jean and Pierre predominated among boys, and Marie, Madeleine, Marguerite, Anne, and Jeanne among girls. Jean-Baptiste and Joseph, however, were more common in the colony; similarly, the name Marie was more popular in Quebec, while Jeanne held sway in France. It is difficult to distinguish true double first names – those written with a hyphen – from juxtaposed first names, which could be used separately.

The table below gives, for each sex, the list of most common first names, single or composite, among the some 400,000 individuals baptised before 1800:

Males			Females
Rank	First name	Qty	Rank	First name	Qty
1	JEAN BAPTISTE	21 659	1	MARIE JOSEPHE	18 594
2	JOSEPH	21 283	2	MARIE LOUISE	13 000
3	PIERRE	16 276	3	MARIE ANNE	10 818
4	FRANCOIS	12 852	4	MARIE MARGUERITE	9 177
5	LOUIS	11 776	5	MARIE ANGELIQUE	8 659
6	ANTOINE	7 703	6	MARIE MADELEINE	8 569
7	CHARLES	7 221	7	MARGUERITE	8 357
8	MICHEL	5 540	8	MARIE	6 581
9	JACQUES	5 376	9	MARIE GENEVIEVE	5 913
10	AUGUSTIN	3 738	10	MARIE FRANCOISE	5 620
11	JOSEPH MARIE	3 595	11	MARIE CATHERINE	5 526
12	JEAN	3 437	12	MARIE CHARLOTTE	4 750
13	ETIENNE	3 038	13	MARIE THERESE	4 386
14	ALEXIS	2 461	14	GENEVIEVE	3 989
15	ANDRE	2 130	15	MARIE ELISABETH	3 104
16	NICOLAS	2 036	16	CATHERINE	2 972
17	JEAN FRANCOIS	2 006	17	ELISABETH	2 507
18	PAUL	1 751	18	ANGELIQUE	2 330
19	FRANCOIS XAVIER	1 705	19	MARIE AMABLE	1 976
20	IGNACE	1 563	20	FRANCOISE	1 964
21	JEAN MARIE	1 521	21	LOUISE	1 937
22	GABRIEL	1 475	22	MARIE ARCHANGE	1 683
23	TOUSSAINT	1 014	23	MADELEINE	1 658
24	BASILE	969	24	THERESE	1 641
25	GUILLAUME	959	25	CHARLOTTE	1 617

Source: PRDH website

Names of Ontario and Québec

You may note that I have used a number of different names for Ontario & Québec. I have done this so that the date of the event reflects the name of the region at that point in time. I hope that it gives a little more history to the family tree. The code for the modern day Ontario and Quebéc, which I have adopted, is as follows:

Date Quebec Ontario

July 24, 1534 Nouvelle-France Nouvelle-France

February 10, 1763 Québec Québec

June 10, 1791 Bas Canada Upper Canada

July 23, 1840 Canada Est Canada West

July 1, 1867 Québec (QC) Ontario (ON)

The Evolution of Surnames

Surnames contain a small, but well-memorialized, slice of our family histories. To those who have deciphered them, surnames offer a clue about one of our ancestors’ memorable traits at the time when surnames were becoming fixed. Throughout prehistory, and indeed for most of recorded history, most people have been known by only one name. In simpler societies, where everyone could reasonably be expected to know all their neighbours and only rarely to come into contact with people from other towns, a single name sufficed. Only in more complex societies, most notably that of the Roman Empire, were men frequently known by more than one name. The complex Roman system incorporated a personal first name (praenomen), a hereditary family name (nomen), a nickname or “common name” (cognomen), and possibly a battery of acquired names (agnomen) based upon character traits (Pius, Augustus, etc.) or military accomplishments (Africanus, Germanicus, etc.). People might also be known for their place of origin or residence (of Syracuse, the Thracian, etc.). The names of famous Romans have come down through history in a wide variety of manners: Marcus Tullius Cicero is known only by his nickname (Cicero, or chick-pea), Gaius Julius Caesar is known by both his family name (Julius) and his common name (Caesar, or redhead), and Marcus Antonius is usually known by the anglicized name “Mark Anthony”, probably because of Shakespeare’s influence.

Medieval Names

With the end of the Roman Empire and the dawning of the medieval period, trade, travel and learning declined throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and life once again moved at a slower, if not necessarily simpler, pace. By the fifth century, hereditary surnames had all but vanished. Those who didn’t farm lived in villages or small towns where a first name, sometimes accompanied by a casual nickname, was enough to distinguish one citizen from one another. Still, nicknames were used fairly often, as our medieval ancestors drew their children’s names from a much smaller pool of possibilities than we use today. In England, for example, the names John and William were extremely dominant, with the occasional Thomas thrown in for variety.

The secondary nicknames, or bynames, were commonly based on where one lived, one’s lineage, one’s occupation, or some unusual feature or habit. Only in larger towns might there be an occasional mix-up — and this sort of thing could be remedied by having one of the town’s two John Smiths adopt an alternative byname, such as John the Young.

Though it did have some failings, this informal system was quite functional for most purposes. Since few people ever had dealings with the world beyond their hometown, first names and casual nicknames sufficed in most situations. Most people were illiterate, and written documents were created only very rarely (as some genealogists can attest), so there were few pressures for standardization of spelling or form.

Indeed, it seems that surnames were generally adopted more for their style than their substance. One of the first groups to employ standardized surnames were the nobles of Normandy, who adopted surnames for roughly the same reasons that European rulers adopted titles of nobility. A surname was seen as being a mark of status that helped to distinguish the aristocrat from the commoner. The practice spread from Normandy to the rest of France and, following the Norman conquest in 1066, the English and Scottish nobility adopted the Norman affectation with enthusiasm, though hereditary surnames had been all but unknown previously. In both Britain and France, the practice spread from the landowning class to all classes in the early 1300s, being adopted in larger settlements first.

In a 1586 work titled Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine, William Camden wrote: “About the yeare of our Lord 1000... surnames began to be taken up in France, and in England about the time of the Conquest, or else a very little before, under King Edward the Confessor, who was all Frenchified... but the French and wee termed them Surnames, not because they are the names of the sire, or the father, but because they are super added to Christian names as the Spanish called them Renombres, as Renames.”

What’s in a Name?

What is a dit name?

Denomination in Old Quebec

Nickname

Most Frequent First Names

Males

Names of Ontario and Québec

The Evolution of Surnames

Medieval Names