What’s in a Name?

History has changed the spelling of many family names and the Guimond name is no exception. Usually a person spoke his version of his name, phonetically, to a scribe, a priest, or a recorder. Hence we have variations of the name Guimond. The name Guimont and Guimond, in French sound exactly the same. It is common to see the same family members with different spellings of their name at different times in history. For example, one priest could spell the name Guimont at a baptism and another priest may spell it Guimond at a marriage.

So where does the name, Guimond, come from? According to the Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4, Guimond is a French name derived from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements wīg ‘battle’, ‘combat’ + mund ‘protection’. According to 4crests.com, this French, Spanish, German, Italian and English surname of GUIMOND was originally from the Norman form of an Old French personal name, composed of the Germanic element WIL (will, desire). According to Jack Kovacs, the name Guimond originates from Guy-Des-Monts, for a chap who cultivated "guy" (a kind of flower from which perfume is made) in the mountains. Guy Des Monts (Guy of the Mountains).

Regardless of the origination of the name, as the Guimond family moved from French Canada into English Canada and the United States the name was written by English people so the name adopted interesting variations depending on how clearly the Guimond spoke and how well the recorder listened. And so the name has evolved with time and geography.

The evolution of our family name, Demoe, from Guimond may have occurred in two ways. In the 1820 – 1830 timeframe, Joseph Guimond adopted the dit name Dumont and became known as Joseph Guimond dit Dumont an ultimately shortened it to Joseph Dumont. The second possibility is that Dumont was never adopted as a dit name and that a combination of poor pronunciation and poor listening by Anglophones may have directly translated Guimond to Dumont and then Demoe. This would have occurred in the 1850 timeframe when Joseph Guimond moved from French speaking Canada Est (Quebec) to English speaking Canada West (Ontario). One thing we know is that the name Dumont was used in Canada West.

The first record of the Dumont name changing to Demoe was in 1869 when Joseph Dumont purchased his ranch on Lot 12, Concession 8 of Bexley Township, Victoria County, Ontario. A history student once told me that during the period when the Dumonts attended school in English Canada there was a push to teach everyone English and some teachers took it upon themselves to provide English spelling to French names. This would have reinforced the change to Demoe. It is also quite possible that Demoe was the best attempt at providing a phonetically correct name.

In another example I found that Stephen Dumond had purchased some farmland. When he purchased an adjacent parcel his name was recorded as Stephen Demoe.

The following are some to the Guimond variations that I have found:

Guimaud

Guimault

Guimaux

Guimet

Gimond

Guemon

Guimon

Guimonet

Guimons

Guimont

Guinon

Guimot

Guymon

Guymond

Guymont

Gymon

Jimmo

The following are some of the Dumont variations that I have found:

Dumont

Dumond

Demeau

Demoe

Demau

Demaux

Demonds

Demont

Dhumon

Dumon

Dumons

Dumonts

Dumout

Dusmont

Dutmond

According to the PRDH at the University of Montreal there were 236 Guimonds baptized in Quebec before 1800, making it the 441^st most popular family name.

What is a dit name?

Naming practices require a separate and longer explanation, but again I will deal briefly with "dit" (masculine) or "dite" (feminine) names. "Dit" means "said to be" or "called" or "also known as". This was to distinguish two people or two family lines with the same surnames from one another. Unlike an alias or a.k.a. that are given to one specific person, the dit names will be given to many persons. It seems the usage exists almost only in France, New France and in Scotland where we find clans or septs. As we see from Marie Adelaide Marticotte dite Aÿette's case, the "dite" name was dropped from her common usage (i.e. her "everyday" name) other than in her the baptism and marriage records. In other cases only the "dit" name was used. For example, another relative might use the "Aÿette" surname alone.

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
1	GUIMOND	JOLET
1	GUIMOND	PLANTE
*	GUIMOND	DUMONT

Source: PRDH website

* - added by B. Demoe, no reference in PRDH.

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.”

Though the practice of employing surnames was imported from Normandy, British surnames drew from a broad range of ethnic and linguistic roots, which reflected the history of Britain as an oft-invaded land. These roots include, but are not limited to, Old English, Middle English, Old French, Old Norse, Irish, Gaelic, Celtic, Pictish, Welsh, Gaulish, Germanic, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

Though hereditary surnames had become common in England by the early 1300s, even as late as 1465 they were not universal. During the reign of Edward V, a law was passed requiring certain Irish to adopt surnames in order to make them easier to track and control: “They shall take unto them a Surname, either of some Town, or some Colour, as Black or Brown, or some Art or Science, as Smyth or Carpenter, or some Office, as Cooke or Butler.” Other ethnic groups that adopted hereditary surnames comparatively late include the Norse, Welsh and Dutch, who persisted in using non-fixed bynames until as late as the 17^th century.

It is interesting to note that hereditary surnames have only returned to common usage in the

past 900 years, and that the possession of a third name (middle name) has only become common in the past two centuries.

Categories of Names

English bynames and surnames can be quite cleanly separated into four distinct categories: names based on lineage, names based on geography, names based on occupation, and nicknames based on some unusual characteristic.

Surnames based on lineage are very common in English-speaking countries. Either the name of the father is simply appended to the name of the child (i.e., John William) or a possessive “s” might be added, giving names like Williams. In some cases, the ending “son” is added, producing names such as Davidson, Richardson, or Anderson (son of Andrew). The suffix “kin” can be used in surnames as a diminutive — so Tomkin is “Little Thomas”, Wilkin is “Little William” and Perkin is “Little Peter”. The Irish “O”, as in O’Brien, means the grandson of Brien. In Scotland and Ireland, either “Mac” or “Mc” means “son of”; “ap” serves the same purpose in Wales. Families that had settled in Ireland soon after the Norman Conquest may have a surname beginning with “Fitz” (from the French “fils”, for “son”). “Fitz”, as used in England often indicates illegitimacy — so the surname Fitzroy means the illegitimate son of the King (from the French, Fils de Roi). The same function is served by “ez” in Spain and Portugal, “szen” or “sen” in the Netherlands, by “sen”, “son” or “zoon” in Scandinavian countries, by “ov” or “ev” in Slavic countries or by “ibn” in Arab lands.

Surnames representing localities are easy to spot if they come from a specific geographical area or part of land. “Ewan Ireland” is obviously shorthand for “Ewan, from Ireland” — Ewan would only be called this in a foreign country. Similarly, an ancestor recorded as Tom Lincoln may have thought of himself as just plain Tom, but been called Tom Lincoln by others when outside the town of Lincoln. If your surname ends in land, ton, ville, ham, don, burg, berg, borg, bury, berry, field, fort, caster, chester, thorpe, by, dorf, hoff, dam, gracht, veld, stead, stadt, stad, grad or any similar place-specific suffix, you can probably find the origin of your name by simply perusing a comprehensive atlas. The evolution of language has made others are less obvious: Cullen (“back of the river”), and Dunlop (“muddy hill”). Saxon names referred to the bearer’s estate or place of residence using the word “atte” (“at the”), which has survived in surnames such as Atwood, Atwell and Atwater. Continental European names often employed the particles des, d’, de, de la, de las, della, del, di, du, da, van, vande, van der, von and ten — all of which mean from, at, or of.

Occupational surnames were derived from a man’s occupation (Carpenter, Taylor, Baker, Mason, etc.). Some names which refer to a social situation – such as Lord, Young and Freeman — are also placed in this category. Some apparently obvious occupational names aren’t what they may seem, however. A Farmer did not work in agriculture but collected taxes, and Banker is not an occupational surname at all, meaning “dweller on a hillside”. Another common stumbling point in the deciphering of occupational names is that many medieval jobs no longer exist. While it’s still fairly easy for us to understand that a Falconer trained falcons, it never occurs to us that a Purcell would be a seller of pork, that a Walker would walk on cloth, or that a Kellogg would kill hogs.

Nicknames are perhaps the most fascinating surnames. They were most commonly based on some obvious physical trait — Long (for height), Short and Beard are three obvious examples — or aspect of an individual’s personality — Gay, Moody and Stern being common examples. The nicknames were not always flattering, of course. Beckett is Old French for ‘little beak’, Courtney is French for ‘short nose’, Cameron is Gaelic for ‘crooked nose’. Nicknames based on animals with distinctive traits are common, particularly in Germany and Eastern Europe. Wolves, bears, eagles and ravens figure prominently. Some nicknames such as the English Drinkwater or the Czech Nejezchleba (“Don’t eat bread!”) refer to characteristics or incidents that modern bearers of the names can’t easily comprehend.

Family Names in North America

Canada and the US employ a greater variety of family names than anywhere else in the world - a greater variety of first names too, for that matter. Surnames have been imported from almost every region of the earth, and some have been newly invented, either accidentally or intentionally. Some changed their names to something "American sounding" upon arrival so as to leave the past behind. Others translated their old name into English. Some families had no fixed surname until after their immigration, at which point they had to commit their family name to paper for perhaps the first time. (Or rather, what the clerks thought they heard was committed to paper.)

While the majority of North American names are of Western European origin, many others have come from southern and eastern Europe, the Middle East, India and East Asia.

While once surnames were little more than convenient labels to distinguish one William from another, through time surnames have become charged with a greater significance. Family names have become badges of honour. They are a symbol of the continuity of a family line and all that a family stands for, intimately associated with its achievements and prestige. It has become the "good name" to be proud of and to protect as one's most treasured possession.

Source: Jeff Chapman article on the evolution of names