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  • Occitan surnames
    • Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
    The Pyrenees in Occitania

    Occitan surnames are the surnames which are found in parts of southern France and adjoining regions in Catalonia, parts of Italy and Monaco where the Occitan language predominated in centuries gone by. Occitan is a Romance language that is closer to Catalan than modern vernacular French. Because it held sway in large parts of southern France until the end of the eighteenth century, Occitan impacted greatly on how surnames were structured and spelled in this part of Western Europe. The legacy of Occitan is still seen in the surname landscape here today. Occitan surnames predominate in large parts of the Languedoc region of France today straddling the Pyrenees westwards towards the French Riviera, an administrative region still known as Occitania.

    History of Occitan surnames

    The suppression of the Cathar heresy (c. 1209) in the center of Occitan country

    Occitan surnames are the product of the dominance of Occitan in southern France and other parts of the Western Mediterranean world in medieval and even early modern times. The word Occitan is a modern version of lenga d’óc, ‘the language of the d’óc region’. This is a Romance language, meaning that like French, Spanish, Italian and other major Western European languages it is derived from Latin or the Vulgar Latin that was adopted by the Germanic and Asiatic groups that conquered Western Europe at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. Occitan, though, is actually a purer and more sophisticated Romance language than modern, vernacular French. Where French is derived from the tongue that the Franks of northern and central France began to speak and write in the Early Middle Ages, Occitan is actually closer to pure Latin, having developed in southern France in a region much closer to Italy and Rome itself.[1]

    This Occitan tongue predominated in parts of southern France, Catalonia, Monaco and pockets of northern and western Italy. It was not uniformly spoken throughout this region however, as other regional dialects such as Ligurian, Piedmontese and Provencal gained purchase in other areas. Over time the region where Occitan persevered for the longest amount of time was in the Languedoc region of southern France, centred on Toulouse and extending southwards towards the Pyrenees and over the border into Catalonia in Spain. This is a part of Western Europe which has always had its own individual identity, whether it be in the development of the Cathar heresy[2] here in the thirteenth century or the manner in which Languedoc vintners revolted against French government policies at the beginning of the twentieth century.[3] It is unsurprising then to find that while other parts of France accepted the vernacular, modern French language in the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the people of the Languedoc proudly retained their lingual traditions and the Occitan tongue. This is reflected in the prevalence of Occitan surnames in this region of southern France down to modern times, particularly along the Pyrenees and into places like the Val D’Aran in Spain there.

    Occitan naming conventions

    The Occitan alphabet is the same as the Roman alphabet, but the frequency with which certain letters are used can differ considerably from other Romance languages such as modern, vernacular French. This means that while many surnames that are found in northern and central France, are also found in the Languedoc or Occitan region, but will often have a different spelling. Hence the more common French surname Fèvre becomes Fabre in Occitan, the French Bouvier becomes Boyer and Doumergue is an Occitan version of names which one would typically found spelled as Dumouriez and the like in the more northerly parts of France.[4]

    Most popular Occitan surnames

    The most popular Occitan surnames are as follows:  

    • Faure – One of the most common Occitan surnames of all. It is an occupational surname indicating an ancestor was a blacksmith or ironworker of some kind.[5]
    • Latour – An Occitan surname which is a toponymic one. It refers to a ‘tower’ and indicates that a forbear or ancestor of some kind lived near a tower or fortification.
    • La Costa – Historically this has been an extremely common surname in the Occitan region. It is a toponymic surname which refers to someone hailing from ‘the coast’. Historic records show it was very common in places like Toulouse and Saint Flour in medieval and early modern times.[6]
    • Muret – An Occitan version of Murat. The name is toponymic in many instances, with people holding it who had ancestors hailing from Labastide-Murat in south-western France.[7]

    Famous people with Occitan surnames

    Joachim Murat
    • Joachim Murat – One of Napoleon Bonaparte’s closest allies and generals, he was eventually rewarded by being made King of Naples in 1808. He hailed from Labastide-Murat in the Occtian-speaking region of southern France.[8]
    • Gaston Doumergue – Hailing from Aigue-Vives in southern France on the fringes of the regions where Occitan and Provencal dominated in centuries gone by, Doumergue carries a fairly common Occitan surname. He served as President of France from 1924 to 1931.[9]
    • Jeanne Louise Galice – Better known mononymously as Jain, this singer-songwriter is from Toulouse in the heart of Occitania.[10]
    • Pierre Fabre – From Castres in the Occitanie region of south-western France, this pharmacist founded Laboratoires Pierre Fabre in the early 1960s. He carries one of the most common Occitan surnames.[11]

    See also


    Explore more about Occitan surnames

    References

    1. ↑ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Occitan-language
    2. ↑ https://www-tc.pbs.org/inquisition/pdf/TheCatharHeresy.pdf
    3. ↑ J. Harvey Smith, ‘Agricultural Workers and the French Wine-Growers’ Revolt of 1907’, in Past & Present, No. 79 (May, 1978), pp. 101–125.
    4. ↑ https://heraldry.sca.org/names/french/saintflour.html
    5. ↑ https://www.houseofnames.com/faure-family-crest
    6. ↑ https://heraldry.sca.org/names/french/saintflour.html
    7. ↑ https://www.houseofnames.com/muret-family-crest
    8. ↑ https://www.napoleon.org/en/young-historians/napodoc/joachim-murat-king-of-naples/
    9. ↑ https://www.elysee.fr/en/gaston-doumergue
    10. ↑ https://thevogue.com/artists/jain/
    11. ↑ https://www.pierre-fabre.com/fr/communique_presse/1962-2022-le-groupe-pierre-fabre-celebre-ses-60-ans


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