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This final third part of oak words is our grab bag of odds and ends wherein we look at oak surnames in many languages, at oak place names like Manitoba’s Massacre of Seven Oaks and at some native Canadian oak species. Canadian Species of Oak & Uses Ten of the more than two hundred species of oak are native to Canada. Among them, White Oak, Quercus alba (Latin, white, referring to the whitish or grey-green underside of the leaves) is the most important lumber oak. American colonists dubbed it Stave Oak because the dense wood made tight whiskey barrels. Southern Ontario and southern Québec are White Oak’s northern limits. British Columbia has one native oak, the scrubby, scarce Quercus garryana, the Garry Oak, named by early botanical explorer David Douglas after Nicholas Garry, a Hudson’s Bay Company official who assisted him in the 1820s. The fever-bush family, Garryaceae, is also named after this man. From Cape Breton Island to the western shore of Lake Superior grows Red Oak, Quercus rubra (Latin ‘red’ referring to the dark-brown, rusty red of its autumn leaves). Red Oak, in French le chêne rouge, is widely used as flooring and in furniture. Most wild birds and mammals feed on acorns in the fall. Canadian Oak Place Names Oakville, Ontario was named because oak staves were made into whiskey barrels and other containers there. The tree-clad snuggery of Oak Bay overlooks Haro Strait near Victoria on Vancouver Island. It is one of British Columbia’s most British enclaves, with fine mansions, tea shops, private schools, and plummy accents floating through a Pacific afternoon of scones and cricket scores echoing from the BBC World Service on the wireless.
Oak Island’s Lost Pirate Treasure in The Money Pit In Mahone Bay off Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coast, Oak Island keeps the mystery of its gold hoard, reputedly buried by Blackbeard, Morgan or William Kidd, all pirates. The hunt for this booty began in 1795 and has never really ceased, three treasure seekers having died on Oak Island as recently as 1965. In 1971 an underwater television camera lowered into the subquercine depths showed what purported to be three chests, a metal pick, and the skeleton of a chopped-off human hand! The island is privately owned and treasure-hunters must obtain permission prior to visiting.
The Massacre of Seven Oaks This was one of many skirmishes between rival fur companies for trading control in what is now Manitoba and areas farther west. The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Northwest Company fought many times before they amalgamated in 1821. On June 19, 1816, at Seven Oaks, a few kilometers from Fort Douglas at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, Métis working for the Northwest Company ambushed a band of men led by Robert Semple, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Douglas. Métis killed Semple and twenty of his underlings. The HBC’s Earl of Selkirk retaliated by capturing Fort William and retaking Fort Douglas. The province of Manitoba maintains Seven Oaks House as an historic site.
Oak Surnames Sir Harry Oakes (1874-1943) was a wealthy Ontario mine owner who moved to the Bahamas in 1935 and was mysteriously murdered at his island Annie Oakley was an American sharpshooter (1860-1926). An oak-lea is a British place description. In Old English a léa was a tract of land able to be farmed. An oak-lea featured a grove of oak trees. From the descriptive came farm names, house names and human surnames.
French Oak Surnames André Chénier (1762-94) was a French poet guillotined during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. His name is part of a group of common French surnames based on an ancestor whose house stood beside an oak tree, in French chêne. Only after his death were Chénier’s greatest works published, and then he received the postmortem accolade of all France, being declared the greatest writer of French classical verse since Racine. An opera in the Verismo style based on his life is still part of the repertoire. “Andrea Chénier” with music by Umberto Giordano premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1896. Chêne and its variants are widespread throughout France in many regional variations, among which are: Chenay, Chêneau, Cheneval (‘oak-valley’), and in surnames composed of prepositional phrases or with definite articles: Duchêne, Duchesne, and Lechêne. Flemish Oak Surnames Jan van Eyck (of the oak), one of the great Flemish masters, was born in Flanders around 1389 A.D. His masterwork is the altarpiece of the Ghent cathedral. Fictional Surnames Popular Canadian novelist Mazo de la Roche (1879-1961) named a fictional family after a stout species of native Canadian tree in a series of popular romances, among which was The Whiteoaks of Jalna. More English Oak Surnames Oak is a common English last name, with variants like Oake, Oaks, and Oke. But disguised and more interesting are variants like Noak, Noakes, Nokes, and Roke. The initial consonants might be called prepositional debris stuck to Oak in some of its early phrasal surnames, for example, when Thomas atten Oke (1296 A.D.) ‘Thomas at the oak’ becomes over time Thomas Noke. All instances of the surname Roke and some instances of Rook come from Middle English atter Oke ‘at the oak.’ Compound oak surnames include Ackroyd, a Yorkshire family name denoting an ancestor who lived at the oak (Old English ac) clearing (Old English rod, Yorkshire dialect pronunciation ‘royd’). A variant is Oakenroyd. Acland had a founding ancestor who lived on land where oaks grew. Oaker, Oakey, Oakford, Oakhill, Oakhurst, and Oakman are okay here too. German Oak Surnames Eich, Eicher, Eichler, Eichner, Eichbaum, Eichmann and Eickemeyer are German surnames based on an ancestor living beside oaks or selling oak lumber. An interesting “house sign” surname in German is Eichhorn, a shortening of the word for squirrel Eichhörnchen ‘little oak (acorn) horn,’ that is, little hoarder or storer of acorns. In the days before houses were numbered, many homes and shops had animal signs to identify either the house or the business. Squirrel fur was one of the hides sold by furriers in medieval Germany, and a merchant might label his house with the painting of a squirrel; then, as the age of surnames arose, he might identify himself as Hans zum Eichhörnchen ‘Hans at the sign of the squirrel,’ which became shortened in time to Hans Eichhorn. Dutch and Flemish have similar oak surnames.
Hans Hoffmann 1545-1592, Eichhörnchen, 1578, watercolour and gouache on parchment
Slavic Oak Surnames Russian has Dubov ‘oak’ and Dubrovin ‘oak grove’ and Dubinsky ‘oak-tree.’ Zoludev means ‘acorn’ from an ancestor who sold them or who had a brown complexion and earned an acorn nickname. Dubchek is a diminutive ‘little oak.’ Ukrainian has surnames like Derevo ‘tree’ and Dubogrej ‘oak-warm.’
Oak surnames in Other Languages Latvian has surnames like Ozols ‘oak’ and Ozolins ‘little oak.’ Finnish has Tamminen from tammi ‘oak.’ Irish has Darroch, Darragh, Daraugh, all ‘oak.’
Personal Oak Name Spanish has Robustiano, a Christian name for men, based on San Robustiano, an Italian Catholic martyr listed in the calendar of saints, from robustus Latin, strong as oak.
And now Uncle Billy’s bucket of quercine verbal lore is empty. The last acorn has been nibbled and ‘chipmunched’ away. I hope all three parts were. . .oak-ay.
© 2007 William Gordon Casselman
Enjoy Part 1 of OAK WORDS and OAK WORDS Part 2.
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home. The park system of Niagara Falls, Ontario, is largely a bequest of Oakes’s estate to the honeymoon city.
Annie Oakley, 1902 
