Understanding Dit names
Why a dit name? Dit names were often adopted by families to distinguish them from another branch of the same family. Interestingly, many dit names derived from military service, where early French military rules required a nom de guerre, or nickname, for all regular soldiers. The specific dit name may have been chosen for many of the same reasons as the original surname - as a nickname based on trade or physical characteristics, to identify the ancestral place of origin (Andre Jarret de Beauregard, where Beauregard refers to the ancestral home in the French province of Dauphine), etc.
A dit name can be legally used to replace the family's original surname, so you may find an individual listed with a dit name, or under either the original surname or the dit name. Dit names may also be found reversed with the original surname, or as hyphenated surnames.
- Hudon dit Beaulieu
- Beaulieu dit Hudon
- Hudon Beaulieu
- Beaulieu Hudon
- Hudon-Beaulieu
- Beaulieu-Hudon
- Hudon
- Beaulieu
When recording a dit name in your family tree software, it is generally standard practice to record it in its most common form - e.g. Hudon dit Beaulieu. A standardized list of dit names with their common variants can be found in Rene Jette's Répertoire des Noms de Famille du Québec" des Origines à 1825 and Msgr Cyprien Tanguay's Dictionnaire genealogique des familles canadiennes (Volume 7). Another extensive source is The dit Name: French Canadian Surnames, Aliases, Adulterations, and Anglicizations by Robert J. Quentin. When the name is not found in one of the above sources, you can use a phone book (Québec City or Montréal) to select the most common form, or just record it in the form most often used by your ancestors.
Comments
Great article easy to understand. References were unknown to us, we will add to our references lists on Meaning of Names, and to Our French Canadian Roots. Dit names are difficult to keep track of and this article covers it well.
Lionel Mayrand
Dit naming was also used to identify cadres of soldiers. Most often they referred to the
surname of the (military)formation as a hailing recognition factor. In the confusion
of battle, it was always necessary to be able
to direct the formation to a particular action
for succesful maneuvering. As the dit naming
would recognize “Andre Jaret Dit Beauregard” it further identified Andre Jaret as a soldier
of the unit that was directed by the “Beauregard” commander or possibly by the captain whose surname was BEAUREGARD . These
were some of the basic tenets of battlefield
tactics that were among the first rules that
an officer had to learn.