Anyone who’s done research into French-Canadian ancestry knows that the naming conventions are somewhat unique, generally owing to the small number of original settlers and the ensuing large family sizes. The result is that there would be several people living at the same time in the same area, all with the same name. In my genealogy documents I’ve taken a few precautions to help me distinguish individuals within a long list of names.

‘DIT’ NAMES
To  help alleviate this problem, the French Canadians would give people a form of nickname that could be based on any one of a number of sources: Where the person was from, what their occupation was, if they were the ‘younger’ one with that name or the ‘older’ one, and so on. These nicknames are called “Dit” names, because the word ‘dit’ means ‘called’ in French, as in, “Catherine (dit LeJeune) Joseph”. I put these Dit names in parentheses within the name, as in the example just shown.

DUPLICATE NAMES
Despite the practice of using “Dit” names, many of my ancestors who gave their children similar names through succeeding generations are difficult to tell apart in a long list of names. Thus, a Jean-Baptiste might name his son Jean-Baptiste, who might also name his son Jean-Baptiste. Also, most of these families have 6 or more children, so there end up being a great many people with the same name. To cut down on the confusion I’ve added short descriptions in parentheses within some people’s name which help establish how a person relates to other individuals within the family tree. In these cases, I tend to use French terms, so I will show examples in both French and English.

When succeeding generations are named the same I use the words ‘grandfather’, ‘father’, and ‘son’.

• Jean (grandpere) Baillargeon – (grandfather)
  
• Jean (pere) Baillargeon – (father)
  
• Jean (fils) Baillargeon – (son)

When siblings and children of siblings are hard to tell apart I use ‘daughter of’ and ‘son of’.

• Anne (fille de Francois) Brun – (daughter of Francois)
  
• Charles (fils d’Antoine) Brun – (son of Antoine)
  

Occasionally using ‘father of’ is the more appropriate designation to make things clearer.

• Vincent (pere de Sebastien) Brun

ACCENTS
I have elected to leave out accents for purely selfish reasons. Accented names sort differently in the Family Tree Maker program than unaccented names, and until I take the time to go through the entire list and rename everyone, I’ll be leaving the accents off of most names.