page 3 of 3 More on French Canadian “Dit” Names Here is an extract from one French-Canadian genealogical study, presented to give the reader an idea of the tricky convolutions of French surnames. This passage was translated from French, but not by me. “In the earliest documents of Trois-Rivières, dating back to 1651, Nicolas Rivard was referred to with the title “Sieur de la Vigne.” Nicolas, oldest son of Pierre Rivard, was the first of the family to arrive in New France in 1648. Nicolas’ mother, Jeanne Mullard, owned a small piece of land in Tourouvre, named “Clos de La Vigne.” This LaVigne location exits in Tourouvre to this day, where one of our cousins visited and kindly provided us with a picture of a local road sign. Nicolas’ oldest son Nicolas and youngest son Antoine also used the dit name LaVigne, but the dit name was not routinely used after the first three generations. While most families in this line retained Rivard, we have recently discovered numerous families in Quebec that dropped Rivard and kept Lavigne as surname. Many of the Lavigne families were from the Nicolet area.”
Below is a passage about the use of dit surnames in Quebec . I have lost the name of the author, but will cheerfully add it, if any visitor can identify this text. By presenting this snippet, I do not indicate that I agree with all this author’s statements and conclusions. “French Canadians are descended from a relatively small number of immigrants. On top of that, many names were homonyms. The result is that the number of family names in French Quebec today is very small (a few thousand) compared to that in France (hundreds of thousands). Everything was determined in the early centuries of settlement. “The distribution of the most common family names of baptized individuals before 1800 shows that 37 family “A dit name is an alias given to a family name. Compared to other aliases or a.k.a.s given to one specific person, the dit names were given to many persons. It seems the usage exists almost only in France, New France and in Scotland where we find clans or septs. [Note: Not true. Bynames are a part of surname history for many, many peoples and languages of the earth ―b.c. ] “Many of the soldiers of the Carignan Regiment who came here in 1665-1668, lived around Dauphine. While they were not the only ones or the first to use dit names in New France , it seems those soldiers are responsible to a great extent for dit names reaching Quebec. This would explain, for example, why there is a concentration of families with dit names around Lac St-Pierre. There seigneuries belonged often to retired officers from the Carignan regiment.”
Avril Lavigne
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If this subject fascinates you, there are hundreds more startling stories about famous Canadian names in my book, What’s in a Canadian Name? Click on the bookcover for more samples or to order the book online.
© 2005 William Gordon Casselman
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names accounted for more than 1,000 baptisms, 150 for more than 500, and 962 for more than 100. The 15 most common names were used by more than 28,000 individuals, and 1,400 names covered almost 95% of all individuals born in the colony before 1800. 
