Breton surnames are the regional surnames which are found in north-western France, primarily in the Brittany region. Because of the unique historical development of this corner of France the surname landscape here is different in some significant ways from that of most of the rest of France. This is because the Breton language survived here through Roman and medieval times into the early modern era. Unlike most of the languages of continental Western Europe, this is not a Romance language derived from Latin, but rather an older Brittonic-Celtic language. This lingual diversity has ensured that people in towns and cities like Rennes, Lorient and Brest and the surrounding countryside today often have different surnames to those of their French brethren further to the east and south.
History of Breton surnames
There are numerous parts of France today with their own idiosyncratic surname traditions based on regional dialects of French and other Romance languages. Prominent examples are Occitan surnames and Provencal surnames in the south and south-east. The variations involved in these on more mainstream French surnames are, though, quite limited, as ultimately the surnames involved are all based on lingual traditions where Latin is the root language. This is not the case with Breton surnames, which are found in the Brittany region of north-western France.
Breton is a Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. Thus, its roots ultimately lie in the languages spoken by the Celtic peoples who moved into and colonized Western Europe extensively in the first millennium BCE, when the Romans were still little more than a minor power in the Latium region of Central Italy. When the Romans conquered Gaul in the first century BCE under Julius Caesar, they colonized certain parts of it more extensively than others, with the southern, central and eastern parts of the country being more Romanized than others. Brittany in the far-flung north-west, with its colder climate, was one of the least Romanized parts of Gaul and one where Latin penetrated less effectively, ensuring the survival of the Brittonic dialect here which is the source of modern-Breton.[1]
What all of this means is that when surnames began developing across Europe in late medieval times, they did so according to a completely different lingual tradition in north-western France in and around towns like Rennes, Lorient and Brest than they did in other parts of France. These Breton surnames are still substantially different today. Indeed, Brittany was one of the last parts of modern-day France which came under the control of the French crown, not being fully amalgamated into the French state until 1532, when Duke Francis III became a full subject of the French crown. Thereafter the region continued to retain a distinct identity for centuries to come. As recently as the mid-twentieth century approximately one million people here still spoke Breton, something which indicates the resilience of the language, and with it Breton surnames and other regional cultural traits and traditions.[2]
Breton naming conventions
Breton surnames follow a range of different conventions to most other French surnames. A number of prefixes are common in Breton surnames. For instance, many names start with ‘Ker-’, which means ‘fort’, and is found in Breton surnames like Kerguelen, Kerouac and Kermit. Hence, this is a toponymic surname. Others start with the prefix ‘Mor-’, which means ‘sea’, a practical descriptor given Brittany’s position as a giant peninsula of sorts. Morvan is an example of a surname of this kind. Others are occupational surnames which simply follow the lingual specifics of Breton. For instance, ‘Goff’, a popular Breton surname refers to an ancestor being a blacksmith, while Calvez or Kalvez refers to a carpenter.[3]
There are also an unusually large number of people in Brittany with names beginning with the prefix ‘Le’ for ‘the’. Examples include ‘Le Roux’, ‘Le Gall’, ‘Le Goff’ and ‘Le Roy’. Some of these are patronymic surnames. For instance, ‘Le Bihan’ means ‘son of Bihan’, while ‘Le Goff’ means ‘son of Goff’ and is a Breton equivalent of ‘son of Geoffrey’ in a more Anglophone surname tradition. Others are descriptors or toponymic surnames. ‘Le Grand’, for instance, means ‘the tall’ and denotes that an ancestor was deemed to be particularly tall.[4]
Inevitably, as Brittany was amalgamated into the wider French state from the sixteenth century onwards, and as modern, vernacular French became the language of business, education and government, Breton surnames have also absorbed elements of more mainstream French surnames, particularly so since the nineteenth century. Hence, many Breton surnames today also sound very similar to French ones.
Most popular Breton surnames
Some of the most popular Breton surnames are as follows:
- Martin – A common Breton surname. Its origins may ultimately lie in ancient worship of Mars, the Roman god of war.
- Le Gall – Ironically this Breton surname means ‘the Gaul’ and may have been used to denote that an ancestor was noted for speaking vernacular French, i.e. being more Gallic than was the norm in Brittany.
- Le Roux – A surname meaning ‘the red’, a descriptor surname used to indicate an ancestor had red or particularly fair hair or a beard.
- Morvan – A name comprised of the prefix ‘Mor-’, meaning ‘sea’, and ‘van’ meaning something akin to ‘wise’. Overall the name is both a descriptor and a toponymic surname, used to indicate an ancestor lived by the coast and was deemed to be wise.
- Tanguy – A distinctly Breton surname, with ‘Tan’ meaning ‘fire’, and the overall meaning being a term of reverence for someone who was a warrior.[5]
Famous Bretons
- Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec – A French explorer of the eighteenth century from Landudal in Brittany. He discovered the Kerguelen Islands in the southern part of the Indian Ocean in the early 1770s while looking for the southern continent (terra Australis). In naming the islands after himself, the Breton surname Kerguelen was transplanted to the other side of the world from Brittany.[6]
- Jack Kerouac – An ethnically French-Canadian writer who was born in Massachusetts, his ancestry can be traced back to Brittany. The surname is ultimately toponymic, deriving from the town of Kervoach near Morlaix in Brittany where a ‘fort’ was located’, hence the ‘Ker-’ prefix in the name. Kerouac was the author of On the Road and one of the foremost Beat writers of the 1950s.[7]
- Léon Fleuriot – An esteemed Breton scholar and linguist whose work between the 1950s and 1980s focused on Celtic and Gallo-Roman society in Brittany.[8]
- Marine Le Pen – Although born in the suburbs of Paris, the leader of the French right-wing National Rally party bears a Breton surname. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the political dynasty, hailed from La Trinité-sur-Mer in Brittany. The surname refers to a ‘head’ and is variously an occupational surname referring to somebody being the ‘head’ or ‘chief’ of something or a toponymic surname that refers to somebody coming from a peninsula or some such.[9]
Explore more about Breton surnames
- France, Vital Records Index record collection on MyHeritage
- Filae Family Trees record collection on MyHeritage
- France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births record collection on MyHeritage
- France, Church Marriages and Civil Marriages record collection on MyHeritage
- France, Church Burials and Civil Deaths record collection on MyHeritage
- France Newspapers & Periodicals record collection on MyHeritage
- Finding French Ancestors at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- An overview of the massive new record collection from France at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- I Retraced the Journey of My Breton Ancestor Who Became an Inventor in America at the MyHeritage Blog
References
- ↑ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Breton-language
- ↑ Jack E. Reece, ‘Internal Colonialism: The Case of Brittany’, in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1979), pp. 275–292.
- ↑ https://vocab.chat/blog/breton-names.html
- ↑ https://forebears.io/france/brittany/finist%C3%A8re/arrondissement-of-brest
- ↑ https://forebears.io/france/brittany/surnames
- ↑ Noelene Bloomfield, ‘Overview – France’s Quest for Terra Australis: Strategies, Maladies and Triumphs’, in The Great Circle, Vol. 39, No. 2, Special Issue: French Exploration (2017), pp. 8–24.
- ↑ Tom Clark, Jack Kerouac: A Biography (Third Edition, Boston, 2001).
- ↑ https://www.chicagotribune.com/1985/03/22/scholars-quest-leads-to-real-king-arthur/
- ↑ https://www.npr.org/2017/04/21/525110143/marine-le-pens-brutal-upbringing-shaped-her-worldview