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Surnames
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SURNAMES: History of the Family and History of Populations
GUY BRUNET ALAIN BIDEAU
ABSTRACT: A meeting on surnames was recently held in Lyons, gathering searchers from different scientific horizons such as sociology, history, anthropology, demography and population genetics. We selected the six following papers because of their major interest to history of the family and history of populations. Surnames appear as an important and convenient tool for the study of marriage patterns or of geographical mobility. We also provide some general comments about the different uses of surnames in the current works in the field of historical demography and population genetics. We also mention some examples revealing the social significance of surnames in some specific historical context.
INTRODUCTION Why study surnames, and what can such a study add to our knowledge of the history of the family and the history of populations? For a long time, surnames were absent from the work of historical demographers, whose research was based mostly on aggregate statistics. This is quite a paradox, because all archival sources— beginning with civil records and censuses—are nominative, and linkages between data are made by using surnames. For some years now, surnames have been finding their way into the analyses of historical demographers. On the one hand, much recent work is based on a longitudi´ tudes De´mographiques, University of Lyon 2, Lyon, France. Guy Brunet is Professor at the Centre d’E Alain Bideau is Director of Research, CNRS, Centre Pierre Le´on, Universite´ Lumiere, Lyon 2, Lyon, France. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY An International Quarterly, Volume 5, Number 2, pages 153–160 Copyright 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1081-602X
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nal approach to small populations. When one wishes to build individual biographies, to compare demographic behavior between parents and children, and to trace genealogies through a large number of generations, the surname becomes a major factor. On the other hand, several research groups in Canada, the United States, The Netherlands, Scandinavia, and France have started to build very large computerized population files involving several thousand individuals (Annales 1998). Surnames and family relations are at the core of such files. At the same time, the surname has been recognized as more that a tool or a convenient marker: it has become itself the subject of studies. A revealing example of the important place of surnames in recent work is the work of the French historian Jacques Dupaˆquier. Dupaˆquier set out to study social and geographical mobility in France during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries by using life histories and family genealogies. A classic monographic approach to this subject had not included following mobile families throughout French territory, and, of course, it was not possible to look at the vital records of the whole country during two centuries. So the question became how to draw a sample? Dupaˆquier decided to use a nominative survey. After verifying the frequency of surnames in different part of the country, among the immigrants settled in France during the period, and among all the social classes, he chose to base his study on all the families bearing surnames beginning by the letters TRA (Traboulsi, Tracol, and Tramecourt, for instance). The history of these families allowed Dupaˆquier to work out a portrait of France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to describe the evolution of social and demographic behaviors (Dupaquier and Kessler 1992). But historical demographers are not the only researchers who have recently shown an interest in surnames as tools or as objects of studies. Indeed, this special issue is a reflection—though incomplete—of the results of a conference on surnames that took place in Lyons (France) in December 1998, as part of the annual meetings of Centre Jacques Cartier. The conference was organized by Gianna Zei (a geneticist from the University of Pavia, Italy), Pierre Darlu (a biological anthropologist from the University of Paris VII), Bertrand Desjardins (an historical demographer from the University of Montreal), and the guest editors of this special issue. Our wish was to bring together studies on surnames from different scientific fields in an interdisciplinary spirit, and to assess recent studies as well as works in progress. The observation field was limited to those European and North American societies in which surnames were established, according to codified rules, before the sixteenth century; and which had records allowing for the study of the transmission of surnames over generations. We were pleased to receive papers from 25 colleagues working in the fields of history, demography, anthropology, population genetics, and sociology. Surnames can be studied from different points of view. For instance, one can study the ways surnames were created and became permanent in Europe during the medieval centuries. In this approach, one has to use anthroponomic, onomastic, or philological techniques. Or one can study how surnames were transmitted from one generation to the next: did children of both sexes take the surname of the
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father, as was the rule in most western societies? Did the daughters get the name of their mother, as was the case in Sardinia? Or did parents choose freely the surnames of their children from both the mothers’ name and the father’s name, as is happening currently in Quebec? Thus surname transmission must be studied as a form of cultural behavior linked to the place of men and women in the couple and in society. Surnames can also emerge from specific historical contexts and thus reveal their social importance. Two studies presented in the Lyons’ conference are of special interest in this regard. One of them deals with the abolition of slavery in French colonies in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the other with the process of naturalization of immigrants in France during the twentieth century. Taken by force from Africa, black slaves lost freedom and also their surnames, which was a negation of their individual legitimacy and of their cultural origins. For a long time black slaves did have their own or familial surnames, having become part of an anonymous collectivity identified by the name of their master. The absence of individual names was part of the absence of legal existence (vital events of slaves were not recorded) and of personality (without a surname slaves were like things). Priska Degras wonders how surnames were given to slaves in the French Antilles when slavery was finally abolished by France in 1848. By giving surnames to the slaves who became complete citizens with the same civil rights that their former masters had, the French administration could have tried to erase the vestiges of slavery. But we can observe a reluctance among the local French authorities, who refused, for instance, to give to the former slaves surnames already used by French citizens. Some suggested numbers instead of names for the former slaves; others that they be given surnames by changing letters in the name, all of which were ways of refusing to recognize the legal identity. Among the surnames actually given to the former slaves, we find that some were taken, in a mocking fashion, from GrecoRoman mythology—Jupiter or Apollo. Because of resistance by the local authorities, the process of giving names would take 15 years, revealing the persistence of a negative sentiment toward the former slaves (Degras forthcoming). The second example refers to the national significance of surnames. During the first half of the twentieth century, some European countries, practicing nationalist politics, tried to suppress ethnic minorities, or at least tried to make them invisible by changing the surnames of the individuals belonging to these minorities. For instance, in different contexts, the Italian dictator Mussolini decided, in 1928 after the annexation of South Tyrol, to transform Germanic surnames in Italian ones. Later, around 1950, wishing to create a united Bulgarian nation, the administration lead by Todor Zhivkov transformed the actual surnames of minorities into Bulgarian-sounding ones, a process that included the important Turkish minority. In France, during the first half of the twentieth century, there was a very polemical debate over whether immigrants had to keep their original surnames or to turn them into French-sounding ones to further social integration. However, the transformation of immigrants’ surnames—those of Italians, Belgians, or Jews, for instance— remained rare in France. If they wished so, especially in pursuance of some legal obligations, immigrants obtaining French nationality were allowed to modify their surname. According to the research of Nicole Lapierre, the attachment of immi-
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grants to the surname of their ancestors is stronger than state urging of or the individual temptation toward onomastic assimilation. Naturalization by itself is already a break with origin, and keeping one’s surname tends to reinforce the feeling of fidelity toward the familial past. Thus, quite often fidelity toward the original surname appears to be stronger than the desire to become more easily integrated into a new country (Lapierre forthcoming). Several searchers at the Lyons conferences proposed to use surnames to understand migration patters, and, for example, to look at the dispersion of clearly identified surnames that were supposed to have a unique origin. Thus, typical surnames from Flanders can be traced throughout some French regions during the twentieth century. The frequency of surnames can also be used as an indicator of the genetic structure of a population. A large number of surnames, each of them carried by a very few individuals, means that a lot of exchanges with surrounding populations occurred, and that the genetic patrimony is diversified. By contrast, in a population of equal size, a small number of surnames—recurring through the centuries and possessed by a large number of individuals—means that this population remained closed to immigrants, and that its genetic patrimony was not renewed (Cavalli-Sforza, Piazza, and Menozzi 1994). For such hypotheses, surnames become a very interesting genetic marker by comparison with human samples, because the former can be more easily and more cheaply turned into data bases and do not create bioethical problems. Indeed, given the dominant occidental surname pattern, we can see that a surname is transmitted from generation to generation, from father to son, as a sex-linked allele (Lasker 1985). Population geneticists have developed many methods of estimating the kinship coefficient of a population from looking at isonimy at marriage (i.e., when the bride and the groom have the same surname). Of course, such estimations are based on hypotheses, as is made clear by the specialists, that is, on the supposition of the monophyletic origin of surnames, according to which two spouses bearing the same surname share a common ancestor (Crow and Mange 1965; Relethford and Jaquish 1988). We wish to add in this connection two useful examples from the city of Lyons, showing in different historical contexts the interest historian have had in the study of surnames. First, during the period 1921–1936 the quinquennial censuses of the city of Lyons were falsified. During each census, the municipal authorities in charge added between 60,000 and 110,000 inhabitants to the total, giving surnames to these fictitious persons. The municipal authorities chose frequently used French surnames, such as Bernard, Lenoir, Roux, Michel, and so on. But the employees of the census service also made a contribution, creating very curious neighborhoods: Mr. Maigre (Mr. Thin) living next door of Mr. Gras (Mr. Fat), and Mr. Lenoir (Mr. Black) living next door of Mr. Leblanc (Mr. White). The clerks also used the surnames of well-known characters—such as a famous film maker—placing in the same building Mr. Abel next door of Mr. Gance. We also notice an interesting fact as far as history of the family is concerned—nearly all the fictitious household were composed of five persons: the father, the mother, two sons, and one daughter—which perhaps was the image of the perfect family in the minds of the municipal authorities (Bienfait 1968). The second example comes from the registers of the Hoˆtel-Dieu, the charity
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hospital in Lyons in charge of taking care of and placing into child-care families about one thousand abandoned children every year. When nothing was known about the parents, the clerks of the hospital had to create an identity for the child, i.e., a surname and a Christian name. We can see very different attitudes among the clerks in charge of this responsibility. Most of the time the abandoned child received a very common surname, or a Christian name that could be turned into a surname (i.e., Bernard, Denis, Michel). Thus, if the child survived the high risk of mortality during childhood, he or she could hope to disappear into the population, the surname giving no indication of “shameful” origins. Sometimes, abandoned children received surnames that could reveal their origins, such as the name of the month when they were abandoned (Avril, Octobre). Finally, some children received very rare surnames that clearly revealed that they were abandoned, and indicated that they are not ordinary members of the society. For instance, similarly to the case of the slaves from the French Antilles, we find names of abandoned children taken from the Greco-Roman era. Some other surnames were particularly ridiculous, and could create obstacles for these children with respect to social integration. But it would seem (research on this is still in progress) that such ridiculous surnames were given to abandoned children expected to die shortly because of evident health problems. For this special issue, we have selected 6 papers among the 28 presented during the Lyons conference. We do not argue that this selection reflects the diversity of the research presented during the meeting. On the contrary, we chose to select papers referring to the history of the family and the history of populations. Three papers, from Giannetta Murru, Tiphaine Barthelemy, and Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell refer to chronology- and geography-specific contexts in which surnames reveal particular meanings. In some parts of Sardinia, before the eighteenth century, surnames could be transmitted in specific codified ways (from the father to the son and from the mother to the daughter), revealing a particular conception of the familial memory and of familial relations. In the French nobility, the surname, inherited from prestigious ancestors, correlated with membership in a specific social group. Among the Latvian peasant-serfs, surnames were created ex nihilo in the middle of the nineteenth century, and these peasants had to create a familial as well as a personal identity. Two papers, one from Bertrand Desjardins and his colleagues and the other from Michel Poulain and his collaborators, consider surnames in the context of international migration. With respect to Quebec, surnames reveal the demographic history of the population. For the Flanders emigrants to Belgium and France, surnames reveal the chronological steps of the migration. Finally, Alain Collomp, an anthropologist, considers the relationship between surnames and kinship in Haute-Provence, and provides useful suggestions about the problems of the use of the isonimy method in this area. Sardinia remained rather isolated from the rest of Europe and developed particular patterns of surname transmission. Before the sixteenth century and in some instances, until the eighteenth century, individuals could wear different names in successive registers. For example, one could wear the surname of his father, the surname of his mother, and then the two surnames in association. During the modern era, we can observe the “parallel
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transmission” of surnames according to the gender of the child (i.e., the son taking the surname of his father and the daughter taking the surname of her mother). In a certain way, this corresponds to original relations between husband and wife and to the will of remembering all surnames of the last generations, including the ones of the grandmothers. For example, there is a tradition of “uxorilocal exogamy,” which are unions in which the man, coming from another village, settles in the parish of his wife where the marriage was celebrated. It also appears that the families try as much as possible to avoid marriages with close kin so that consanguineous marriages and isonomic ones are rare despite the strong isolation of the villages. Among the French nobilty, surnames generally consisted of several elements: a patronymic name (mostly from the period before ennoblement), one or several names of lands, and titles (such as earl or duke). For some members of the French nobility, such a composite surname indicated by itself the nobility of the persons bearing it and distinguished them from all the rest of society. For that reason, the rules of attribution and of transmission of these composite surnames were very strict. During the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, some of the members of the bourgeoisie tried to create for themselves composite surnames that looked like those of the nobility, trying in this manner to assimilate to the nobility and to be received by noble-born families. In her article, Tiphaine Barthelemy investigates in particular the ways a name coming from the landed property (nom de terre) was given to certain family lines and transmitted through generations. Using case studies of trials involving nobles and “usurpers,” she shows that a surname involved a social stake and was an indicator of the relationships, and sometimes of conflicts, between the bourgeoisie and the nobility. The civil status of Latvian peasants, changing from serfs to free persons during the nineteenth century, obliged the authorities to give surnames to them. Before these laws, the Latvian peasant-serfs were designated by a Christian name and the name of the land to which they belonged. Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell studied the complex process of how surnames were created. Some surnames were given by the authorities, while some were chosen by the freed serfs. The absence of transmitted family surnames often prevented the development of memory of common ancestors and of the feeling of belonging to a family. The laws of 1816–1833 abolishing the serf system involved the attribution of surnames to the previous serfs who now had to be distinguished, as individuals and as members of families, with a Christian name and a surname. The authors show how laws forbade these serfs to take a surname already used by noble or by well-known families—as we already observed in the case of the black slaves in the French Antilles. It was also recommended that the elder person of each family choose the surname for all the younger members of the lineage. But it was also true that when no patriarch was present in the family, brothers chose different surnames, thus making their kinship disappear. In the choice of surnames, those referring to places were the most frequent, followed by the ones referring to rural life and nature, occupational activities or first names. Thus, in the nineteenth century, among the chosen and given surnames of the Latvian peasants, we find many similarities with the secular process through which surnames were acquired in Europe during the Middle-Ages. Bertrand Desjardins, Jacques Le´gare´, and Hubert Charbonneau, from Montreal,
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and Alain Bideau and Guy Brunet from Lyons, investigated the history in France and in New France of surnames of French origin, imported to Quebec during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is striking to observe the permanence and the great diffusion of some of these surnames in Quebec until the present day, even while they became very rare or actually disappeared from the areas in France where they had originated. In this case, surnames are an indicator of demographic behaviors, noticeably of the high fecundity rate of the French Canadians during the past centuries. The patronymic stock in Quebec, at least until the middle of the twentieth century, remained small and did not renew itself much beyond that established in the seventeenth century. The same surnames, imported three or four centuries ago, still are present in Quebec. Some, such as Tremblay, even diffused widely, reflecting the demographic dynamism of this population. On the other hand, in the Malthusian French context, the surnames borne by the emigrants who left for Canada, did not spread widely, some of them disappearing from France already during the nineteenth century. The study of surnames in Quebec also shows how some of them can be modified or can disappear as a consequence of the use of nicknames. Thus, a directive from around 1870, enjoined the citizens to have a single surname and to chose definitively between their surname and their nickname. As a consequence, the number of men bearing the surname Roy declined, while most chose to adopt the older nickname Desjardins, which became a new hereditary patronymic. Michel Poulain, Michel Foulon, Anna Degioanni, and Pierre Darlu use surnames as markers to look at migration. Their goal is to follow the geographical diffusion of surnames coming from Flanders, a region that had high population density was affected simultaneously by an industrial and agricultural crisis in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Walloon area (the French-speaking area of Belgium) and the north of France, which were not affected by the same crises, welcomed these Flemish immigrants. The population registers in Belgium could be used to study the population transfers from Flanders to the Walloon area, but this would entail long and costly research. Thus, an analysis based on the chronological and geographical diffusion of surnames may provide rapid and correct estimates of such population transfers. Michel Poulain and his colleagues focus on these problems. Of course, one must assume the initial hypothesis, namely, that the etymology of a surname is necessarily related to a linguistic area of origin, Flanders or the Walloon lands. To arrive at their goal, the authors selected two sets of surnames considered Flemish: first, surnames beginning with a Flemish prefix, and, second, a set of 143 surnames that are among those most frequently used in the Flemish area at present. The receiving areas and also the patterns of migration at different periods can be investigated in this manner. Concerning migration into France, the authors show how these Flemish surnames, first limited to the border areas and to Paris, eventually scattered over the northern half of the country, and then later to the south-west of France, several hundreds of kilometers from the Flemish area. Finally, Alain Collomp, whose previous works on marriage, kinship, and land transmission in Haute-Provence are well known (Collomp 1983), investigates the potential link between isonymy and close blood relations. This article can be read as a reflection on one of the major hypothesis in anthropological biology—the use
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of surnames as a genetic marker of kinship. Using samples, Alain Collomp shows the high concentration of surnames inside hamlets. In these villages, to make distinction lineage, inhabitants often resort to nicknames. Some of these nicknames become hereditary over a large number of generations, while others over only a limited period of time. In such a context, matrimonial isonomy cannot be avoided, but does not necessarily correspond to a close kinship. Furthermore, since kinship between husband and wife can come from the mothers of the spouses (whose names are not considered in matrimonial isonomy), Alain Collomp suggests taking the mothers’ names into account. Finally, a genealogical study on four generations or more turns out to be indispensable to precisely define the real kinship between spouses, some non-isonomic marriages being concluded between kin. Thus, according to Alain Collomp, surnames constitute a convenient method to estimate matrimonial kinship, but for Haute-Provence during the 18th and 19th centuries, this approximation remains rather rough and unsettled. We do hope this selection will not appear as ill assorted, but will give a picture of the richness and the diversity of current works concerning surnames. This picture remains incomplete, notably because we did not blend into this issue, studies in the field of population genetics (Lasker, 1985). Furthermore, we limited our overall look at European and North American societies. The method of giving surnames in Africa or in Asia (Cavalli-Sforza, in press) sometimes followed other rules and certainly derserves another conference and another special issue.
REFERENCES Annales: Annales de De´mographie Historique 1998: 2. Bienfait, J. 1968. “La population de Lyon a` Travers un Quart de Sie`cle de Recensements Douteux (1911–1936)—Examen Critique des Listes Nominatives.” Revue de Ge´ographie de Lyon 1–2:95–132. Cavalli-Sforza L., A. Piazza, and P. Menozzi. 1994. History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Collomp A. 1983. La Maison du Pe`re: Famille et Village en Haute-Provence aux XVII⬚ et XVIII⬚ Sie`cles. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Crow, J.F., and A.P. Mange. 1965. “Measurement of Inbreeding From the Frequency of Marriages Between Persons of the Same Surname.” Eugenics Quarterly 12:199–203. Degras, P. Forthcoming. “Le Patronyme comme Me´taphore de l’Histoire.” Chapter in Le Patronyme: Histoire, Anthropologie, Socie´te´, edited by G. Brunet , A. Bideau, P. Darlu and G. Zei. Paris: CNRS. Dupaquier, J., and D. Kessler. 1992. La Socie´te´ Franc¸aise au XIX⬚ Sie`cle. Paris: Fayard. Lapierre, N. Forthcoming. “L’Emprise du National sur le Nominal.” Chapter in Le Patronyme: Histoire, Anthropologie, Socie´te´, edited by G. Brunet , A. Bideau, P. Darlu and G. Zei. Paris: CNRS. Lasker, G.W. 1985. Surnames and Genetic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Relethford, J.H., and C.E. Jaquish. 1988. “Isonymy, Inbreeding and Demographic Variation in Historical Massachussets.” American Journal of Anthropology 77:243–252.
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SURNAMES: History of the Family and History of Populations
GUY BRUNET ALAIN BIDEAU
ABSTRACT: A meeting on surnames was recently held in Lyons, gathering searchers from different scientific horizons such as sociology, history, anthropology, demography and population genetics. We selected the six following papers because of their major interest to history of the family and history of populations. Surnames appear as an important and convenient tool for the study of marriage patterns or of geographical mobility. We also provide some general comments about the different uses of surnames in the current works in the field of historical demography and population genetics. We also mention some examples revealing the social significance of surnames in some specific historical context.
INTRODUCTION Why study surnames, and what can such a study add to our knowledge of the history of the family and the history of populations? For a long time, surnames were absent from the work of historical demographers, whose research was based mostly on aggregate statistics. This is quite a paradox, because all archival sources— beginning with civil records and censuses—are nominative, and linkages between data are made by using surnames. For some years now, surnames have been finding their way into the analyses of historical demographers. On the one hand, much recent work is based on a longitudi´ tudes De´mographiques, University of Lyon 2, Lyon, France. Guy Brunet is Professor at the Centre d’E Alain Bideau is Director of Research, CNRS, Centre Pierre Le´on, Universite´ Lumiere, Lyon 2, Lyon, France. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY An International Quarterly, Volume 5, Number 2, pages 153–160 Copyright 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1081-602X
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nal approach to small populations. When one wishes to build individual biographies, to compare demographic behavior between parents and children, and to trace genealogies through a large number of generations, the surname becomes a major factor. On the other hand, several research groups in Canada, the United States, The Netherlands, Scandinavia, and France have started to build very large computerized population files involving several thousand individuals (Annales 1998). Surnames and family relations are at the core of such files. At the same time, the surname has been recognized as more that a tool or a convenient marker: it has become itself the subject of studies. A revealing example of the important place of surnames in recent work is the work of the French historian Jacques Dupaˆquier. Dupaˆquier set out to study social and geographical mobility in France during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries by using life histories and family genealogies. A classic monographic approach to this subject had not included following mobile families throughout French territory, and, of course, it was not possible to look at the vital records of the whole country during two centuries. So the question became how to draw a sample? Dupaˆquier decided to use a nominative survey. After verifying the frequency of surnames in different part of the country, among the immigrants settled in France during the period, and among all the social classes, he chose to base his study on all the families bearing surnames beginning by the letters TRA (Traboulsi, Tracol, and Tramecourt, for instance). The history of these families allowed Dupaˆquier to work out a portrait of France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to describe the evolution of social and demographic behaviors (Dupaquier and Kessler 1992). But historical demographers are not the only researchers who have recently shown an interest in surnames as tools or as objects of studies. Indeed, this special issue is a reflection—though incomplete—of the results of a conference on surnames that took place in Lyons (France) in December 1998, as part of the annual meetings of Centre Jacques Cartier. The conference was organized by Gianna Zei (a geneticist from the University of Pavia, Italy), Pierre Darlu (a biological anthropologist from the University of Paris VII), Bertrand Desjardins (an historical demographer from the University of Montreal), and the guest editors of this special issue. Our wish was to bring together studies on surnames from different scientific fields in an interdisciplinary spirit, and to assess recent studies as well as works in progress. The observation field was limited to those European and North American societies in which surnames were established, according to codified rules, before the sixteenth century; and which had records allowing for the study of the transmission of surnames over generations. We were pleased to receive papers from 25 colleagues working in the fields of history, demography, anthropology, population genetics, and sociology. Surnames can be studied from different points of view. For instance, one can study the ways surnames were created and became permanent in Europe during the medieval centuries. In this approach, one has to use anthroponomic, onomastic, or philological techniques. Or one can study how surnames were transmitted from one generation to the next: did children of both sexes take the surname of the
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father, as was the rule in most western societies? Did the daughters get the name of their mother, as was the case in Sardinia? Or did parents choose freely the surnames of their children from both the mothers’ name and the father’s name, as is happening currently in Quebec? Thus surname transmission must be studied as a form of cultural behavior linked to the place of men and women in the couple and in society. Surnames can also emerge from specific historical contexts and thus reveal their social importance. Two studies presented in the Lyons’ conference are of special interest in this regard. One of them deals with the abolition of slavery in French colonies in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the other with the process of naturalization of immigrants in France during the twentieth century. Taken by force from Africa, black slaves lost freedom and also their surnames, which was a negation of their individual legitimacy and of their cultural origins. For a long time black slaves did have their own or familial surnames, having become part of an anonymous collectivity identified by the name of their master. The absence of individual names was part of the absence of legal existence (vital events of slaves were not recorded) and of personality (without a surname slaves were like things). Priska Degras wonders how surnames were given to slaves in the French Antilles when slavery was finally abolished by France in 1848. By giving surnames to the slaves who became complete citizens with the same civil rights that their former masters had, the French administration could have tried to erase the vestiges of slavery. But we can observe a reluctance among the local French authorities, who refused, for instance, to give to the former slaves surnames already used by French citizens. Some suggested numbers instead of names for the former slaves; others that they be given surnames by changing letters in the name, all of which were ways of refusing to recognize the legal identity. Among the surnames actually given to the former slaves, we find that some were taken, in a mocking fashion, from GrecoRoman mythology—Jupiter or Apollo. Because of resistance by the local authorities, the process of giving names would take 15 years, revealing the persistence of a negative sentiment toward the former slaves (Degras forthcoming). The second example refers to the national significance of surnames. During the first half of the twentieth century, some European countries, practicing nationalist politics, tried to suppress ethnic minorities, or at least tried to make them invisible by changing the surnames of the individuals belonging to these minorities. For instance, in different contexts, the Italian dictator Mussolini decided, in 1928 after the annexation of South Tyrol, to transform Germanic surnames in Italian ones. Later, around 1950, wishing to create a united Bulgarian nation, the administration lead by Todor Zhivkov transformed the actual surnames of minorities into Bulgarian-sounding ones, a process that included the important Turkish minority. In France, during the first half of the twentieth century, there was a very polemical debate over whether immigrants had to keep their original surnames or to turn them into French-sounding ones to further social integration. However, the transformation of immigrants’ surnames—those of Italians, Belgians, or Jews, for instance— remained rare in France. If they wished so, especially in pursuance of some legal obligations, immigrants obtaining French nationality were allowed to modify their surname. According to the research of Nicole Lapierre, the attachment of immi-
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grants to the surname of their ancestors is stronger than state urging of or the individual temptation toward onomastic assimilation. Naturalization by itself is already a break with origin, and keeping one’s surname tends to reinforce the feeling of fidelity toward the familial past. Thus, quite often fidelity toward the original surname appears to be stronger than the desire to become more easily integrated into a new country (Lapierre forthcoming). Several searchers at the Lyons conferences proposed to use surnames to understand migration patters, and, for example, to look at the dispersion of clearly identified surnames that were supposed to have a unique origin. Thus, typical surnames from Flanders can be traced throughout some French regions during the twentieth century. The frequency of surnames can also be used as an indicator of the genetic structure of a population. A large number of surnames, each of them carried by a very few individuals, means that a lot of exchanges with surrounding populations occurred, and that the genetic patrimony is diversified. By contrast, in a population of equal size, a small number of surnames—recurring through the centuries and possessed by a large number of individuals—means that this population remained closed to immigrants, and that its genetic patrimony was not renewed (Cavalli-Sforza, Piazza, and Menozzi 1994). For such hypotheses, surnames become a very interesting genetic marker by comparison with human samples, because the former can be more easily and more cheaply turned into data bases and do not create bioethical problems. Indeed, given the dominant occidental surname pattern, we can see that a surname is transmitted from generation to generation, from father to son, as a sex-linked allele (Lasker 1985). Population geneticists have developed many methods of estimating the kinship coefficient of a population from looking at isonimy at marriage (i.e., when the bride and the groom have the same surname). Of course, such estimations are based on hypotheses, as is made clear by the specialists, that is, on the supposition of the monophyletic origin of surnames, according to which two spouses bearing the same surname share a common ancestor (Crow and Mange 1965; Relethford and Jaquish 1988). We wish to add in this connection two useful examples from the city of Lyons, showing in different historical contexts the interest historian have had in the study of surnames. First, during the period 1921–1936 the quinquennial censuses of the city of Lyons were falsified. During each census, the municipal authorities in charge added between 60,000 and 110,000 inhabitants to the total, giving surnames to these fictitious persons. The municipal authorities chose frequently used French surnames, such as Bernard, Lenoir, Roux, Michel, and so on. But the employees of the census service also made a contribution, creating very curious neighborhoods: Mr. Maigre (Mr. Thin) living next door of Mr. Gras (Mr. Fat), and Mr. Lenoir (Mr. Black) living next door of Mr. Leblanc (Mr. White). The clerks also used the surnames of well-known characters—such as a famous film maker—placing in the same building Mr. Abel next door of Mr. Gance. We also notice an interesting fact as far as history of the family is concerned—nearly all the fictitious household were composed of five persons: the father, the mother, two sons, and one daughter—which perhaps was the image of the perfect family in the minds of the municipal authorities (Bienfait 1968). The second example comes from the registers of the Hoˆtel-Dieu, the charity
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hospital in Lyons in charge of taking care of and placing into child-care families about one thousand abandoned children every year. When nothing was known about the parents, the clerks of the hospital had to create an identity for the child, i.e., a surname and a Christian name. We can see very different attitudes among the clerks in charge of this responsibility. Most of the time the abandoned child received a very common surname, or a Christian name that could be turned into a surname (i.e., Bernard, Denis, Michel). Thus, if the child survived the high risk of mortality during childhood, he or she could hope to disappear into the population, the surname giving no indication of “shameful” origins. Sometimes, abandoned children received surnames that could reveal their origins, such as the name of the month when they were abandoned (Avril, Octobre). Finally, some children received very rare surnames that clearly revealed that they were abandoned, and indicated that they are not ordinary members of the society. For instance, similarly to the case of the slaves from the French Antilles, we find names of abandoned children taken from the Greco-Roman era. Some other surnames were particularly ridiculous, and could create obstacles for these children with respect to social integration. But it would seem (research on this is still in progress) that such ridiculous surnames were given to abandoned children expected to die shortly because of evident health problems. For this special issue, we have selected 6 papers among the 28 presented during the Lyons conference. We do not argue that this selection reflects the diversity of the research presented during the meeting. On the contrary, we chose to select papers referring to the history of the family and the history of populations. Three papers, from Giannetta Murru, Tiphaine Barthelemy, and Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell refer to chronology- and geography-specific contexts in which surnames reveal particular meanings. In some parts of Sardinia, before the eighteenth century, surnames could be transmitted in specific codified ways (from the father to the son and from the mother to the daughter), revealing a particular conception of the familial memory and of familial relations. In the French nobility, the surname, inherited from prestigious ancestors, correlated with membership in a specific social group. Among the Latvian peasant-serfs, surnames were created ex nihilo in the middle of the nineteenth century, and these peasants had to create a familial as well as a personal identity. Two papers, one from Bertrand Desjardins and his colleagues and the other from Michel Poulain and his collaborators, consider surnames in the context of international migration. With respect to Quebec, surnames reveal the demographic history of the population. For the Flanders emigrants to Belgium and France, surnames reveal the chronological steps of the migration. Finally, Alain Collomp, an anthropologist, considers the relationship between surnames and kinship in Haute-Provence, and provides useful suggestions about the problems of the use of the isonimy method in this area. Sardinia remained rather isolated from the rest of Europe and developed particular patterns of surname transmission. Before the sixteenth century and in some instances, until the eighteenth century, individuals could wear different names in successive registers. For example, one could wear the surname of his father, the surname of his mother, and then the two surnames in association. During the modern era, we can observe the “parallel
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transmission” of surnames according to the gender of the child (i.e., the son taking the surname of his father and the daughter taking the surname of her mother). In a certain way, this corresponds to original relations between husband and wife and to the will of remembering all surnames of the last generations, including the ones of the grandmothers. For example, there is a tradition of “uxorilocal exogamy,” which are unions in which the man, coming from another village, settles in the parish of his wife where the marriage was celebrated. It also appears that the families try as much as possible to avoid marriages with close kin so that consanguineous marriages and isonomic ones are rare despite the strong isolation of the villages. Among the French nobilty, surnames generally consisted of several elements: a patronymic name (mostly from the period before ennoblement), one or several names of lands, and titles (such as earl or duke). For some members of the French nobility, such a composite surname indicated by itself the nobility of the persons bearing it and distinguished them from all the rest of society. For that reason, the rules of attribution and of transmission of these composite surnames were very strict. During the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, some of the members of the bourgeoisie tried to create for themselves composite surnames that looked like those of the nobility, trying in this manner to assimilate to the nobility and to be received by noble-born families. In her article, Tiphaine Barthelemy investigates in particular the ways a name coming from the landed property (nom de terre) was given to certain family lines and transmitted through generations. Using case studies of trials involving nobles and “usurpers,” she shows that a surname involved a social stake and was an indicator of the relationships, and sometimes of conflicts, between the bourgeoisie and the nobility. The civil status of Latvian peasants, changing from serfs to free persons during the nineteenth century, obliged the authorities to give surnames to them. Before these laws, the Latvian peasant-serfs were designated by a Christian name and the name of the land to which they belonged. Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell studied the complex process of how surnames were created. Some surnames were given by the authorities, while some were chosen by the freed serfs. The absence of transmitted family surnames often prevented the development of memory of common ancestors and of the feeling of belonging to a family. The laws of 1816–1833 abolishing the serf system involved the attribution of surnames to the previous serfs who now had to be distinguished, as individuals and as members of families, with a Christian name and a surname. The authors show how laws forbade these serfs to take a surname already used by noble or by well-known families—as we already observed in the case of the black slaves in the French Antilles. It was also recommended that the elder person of each family choose the surname for all the younger members of the lineage. But it was also true that when no patriarch was present in the family, brothers chose different surnames, thus making their kinship disappear. In the choice of surnames, those referring to places were the most frequent, followed by the ones referring to rural life and nature, occupational activities or first names. Thus, in the nineteenth century, among the chosen and given surnames of the Latvian peasants, we find many similarities with the secular process through which surnames were acquired in Europe during the Middle-Ages. Bertrand Desjardins, Jacques Le´gare´, and Hubert Charbonneau, from Montreal,
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and Alain Bideau and Guy Brunet from Lyons, investigated the history in France and in New France of surnames of French origin, imported to Quebec during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is striking to observe the permanence and the great diffusion of some of these surnames in Quebec until the present day, even while they became very rare or actually disappeared from the areas in France where they had originated. In this case, surnames are an indicator of demographic behaviors, noticeably of the high fecundity rate of the French Canadians during the past centuries. The patronymic stock in Quebec, at least until the middle of the twentieth century, remained small and did not renew itself much beyond that established in the seventeenth century. The same surnames, imported three or four centuries ago, still are present in Quebec. Some, such as Tremblay, even diffused widely, reflecting the demographic dynamism of this population. On the other hand, in the Malthusian French context, the surnames borne by the emigrants who left for Canada, did not spread widely, some of them disappearing from France already during the nineteenth century. The study of surnames in Quebec also shows how some of them can be modified or can disappear as a consequence of the use of nicknames. Thus, a directive from around 1870, enjoined the citizens to have a single surname and to chose definitively between their surname and their nickname. As a consequence, the number of men bearing the surname Roy declined, while most chose to adopt the older nickname Desjardins, which became a new hereditary patronymic. Michel Poulain, Michel Foulon, Anna Degioanni, and Pierre Darlu use surnames as markers to look at migration. Their goal is to follow the geographical diffusion of surnames coming from Flanders, a region that had high population density was affected simultaneously by an industrial and agricultural crisis in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Walloon area (the French-speaking area of Belgium) and the north of France, which were not affected by the same crises, welcomed these Flemish immigrants. The population registers in Belgium could be used to study the population transfers from Flanders to the Walloon area, but this would entail long and costly research. Thus, an analysis based on the chronological and geographical diffusion of surnames may provide rapid and correct estimates of such population transfers. Michel Poulain and his colleagues focus on these problems. Of course, one must assume the initial hypothesis, namely, that the etymology of a surname is necessarily related to a linguistic area of origin, Flanders or the Walloon lands. To arrive at their goal, the authors selected two sets of surnames considered Flemish: first, surnames beginning with a Flemish prefix, and, second, a set of 143 surnames that are among those most frequently used in the Flemish area at present. The receiving areas and also the patterns of migration at different periods can be investigated in this manner. Concerning migration into France, the authors show how these Flemish surnames, first limited to the border areas and to Paris, eventually scattered over the northern half of the country, and then later to the south-west of France, several hundreds of kilometers from the Flemish area. Finally, Alain Collomp, whose previous works on marriage, kinship, and land transmission in Haute-Provence are well known (Collomp 1983), investigates the potential link between isonymy and close blood relations. This article can be read as a reflection on one of the major hypothesis in anthropological biology—the use
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of surnames as a genetic marker of kinship. Using samples, Alain Collomp shows the high concentration of surnames inside hamlets. In these villages, to make distinction lineage, inhabitants often resort to nicknames. Some of these nicknames become hereditary over a large number of generations, while others over only a limited period of time. In such a context, matrimonial isonomy cannot be avoided, but does not necessarily correspond to a close kinship. Furthermore, since kinship between husband and wife can come from the mothers of the spouses (whose names are not considered in matrimonial isonomy), Alain Collomp suggests taking the mothers’ names into account. Finally, a genealogical study on four generations or more turns out to be indispensable to precisely define the real kinship between spouses, some non-isonomic marriages being concluded between kin. Thus, according to Alain Collomp, surnames constitute a convenient method to estimate matrimonial kinship, but for Haute-Provence during the 18th and 19th centuries, this approximation remains rather rough and unsettled. We do hope this selection will not appear as ill assorted, but will give a picture of the richness and the diversity of current works concerning surnames. This picture remains incomplete, notably because we did not blend into this issue, studies in the field of population genetics (Lasker, 1985). Furthermore, we limited our overall look at European and North American societies. The method of giving surnames in Africa or in Asia (Cavalli-Sforza, in press) sometimes followed other rules and certainly derserves another conference and another special issue.
REFERENCES Annales: Annales de De´mographie Historique 1998: 2. Bienfait, J. 1968. “La population de Lyon a` Travers un Quart de Sie`cle de Recensements Douteux (1911–1936)—Examen Critique des Listes Nominatives.” Revue de Ge´ographie de Lyon 1–2:95–132. Cavalli-Sforza L., A. Piazza, and P. Menozzi. 1994. History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Collomp A. 1983. La Maison du Pe`re: Famille et Village en Haute-Provence aux XVII⬚ et XVIII⬚ Sie`cles. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Crow, J.F., and A.P. Mange. 1965. “Measurement of Inbreeding From the Frequency of Marriages Between Persons of the Same Surname.” Eugenics Quarterly 12:199–203. Degras, P. Forthcoming. “Le Patronyme comme Me´taphore de l’Histoire.” Chapter in Le Patronyme: Histoire, Anthropologie, Socie´te´, edited by G. Brunet , A. Bideau, P. Darlu and G. Zei. Paris: CNRS. Dupaquier, J., and D. Kessler. 1992. La Socie´te´ Franc¸aise au XIX⬚ Sie`cle. Paris: Fayard. Lapierre, N. Forthcoming. “L’Emprise du National sur le Nominal.” Chapter in Le Patronyme: Histoire, Anthropologie, Socie´te´, edited by G. Brunet , A. Bideau, P. Darlu and G. Zei. Paris: CNRS. Lasker, G.W. 1985. Surnames and Genetic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Relethford, J.H., and C.E. Jaquish. 1988. “Isonymy, Inbreeding and Demographic Variation in Historical Massachussets.” American Journal of Anthropology 77:243–252.