Book Description

"Monsieur Picard, who has previously written about the etymologies of the French migrants who settled Quebec and Acadia in the 17th and 18th centuries, now follows the spread of those surnames to various English-speaking parts of North America. Besides its derivations and Anglicizations, this resource references the first French-Canadian settlers bearing the names found in the dictionary. Professor Picard explains the development of French-Canadian surnames and their subsequent Americanization, along with a discussion of the various kinds of Anglicization, direct translations, partial translation, and mistranslations of French into English. Each of the thousands of entries in the dictionary contains two parts. The first of these is onomastic in nature, providing the etymology of the surname and any Americanized variants from which they stem. The second part contains some or all of the following information: the name of the first French-Canadian bearer of the name, the name of his parents, his place of origin in France, the name of his spouse and the names of her parents, and the place of his marriage"--Provided by publisher.