What name forms were used by both men and women in 14th-16th C France?

That’s a question we recently received, so we thought we’d devote a post to answering it!

When French developed from Latin, it retained a gendered marking for the majority of its names — marking which is most obvious when looking at masculine/feminine pairs of names. In Old French, the most common way of feminizing a name was simply adding an -e to the end, but in Middle French, especially by the early 15th C, it became more common to duplicate the final consonant and then add -e.

Some names, however, (particularly ones that already ended in -e!), were used in the same form by both men and women. Here are some examples:

Claude was used in this form by both men and women in France in the 16th C.

While the more common masculine form of the name was Dennis, both Denise and Denyse were used by both men and women at the end of the 13th C.

Gile, which can be a form of Giles or sometimes Gilo, is also the Old French vernacular form of the feminine form of both names, found in the early 14th C.

A bit of a rarity, but Guillaume was used by both men and women in the early 14th C.

Laurence was the usual Middle French vernacular for both men and women in the 16th C.

While Marin was almost exclusively masculine in the 16th C (and the expected Middle French feminine form would be Marine), we have one lone example of Marin used by a woman.

Phelippe, Phlippes, and Phlippe were all used by both men and women; the first form is an Old French one found in the early 14th C, while the latter two are 16th C Middle French forms.

Finally, Robert. Diminutive forms such as Robine and Robinette were much more commonly used by women, but Robert itself was used, albeit rarely, by both men and women.

So, there you are! These are the names we’ve found that were used in exactly the same spelling by both men and women in Old and Middle French.

An onomastic calendar: October

• October 1: Edgar I was crowned King of the English in 959.
• October 2: Athalaric, king of the Ostrogoths, died in 543.
• October 3: Saint Francis of Assisi died in 1226.
• October 4: Saint Theresa of Avila died in 1582
• October 5: Alexios III of Trebizond was born in 1338.
• October 6: Samuel Tsar of Bulgaria died in 1014.
• October 7: Frederick I of Norway and Denmark was born in 1471.
• October 8: Demetrius Zvonimir was crowned king of Croatia in 1076.
• October 9: Denis, the Poet King of Portugal, was born in 1261.
• October 10: Pope Valentine died in 827.
• October 11: Pope Boniface died in 1303.
• October 12: Edwin King of Northumbria was killed in battle in 632/633.
• October 13: Eleanor, Queen of Castile, was born in 1162.
• October 14: William the Bastard won the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
• October 15: Pope Gregory XIII’s calendrical reform came into use in 1582.
• October 16: Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland in 1384.
• October 17: St. Ivo of Kermartin was born in 1253.
• October 18: Dagobert I was crowned king of the Franks in 629.
• October 19: St. Frideswide died in 727.
• October 20: Henry X of Bavaria died in 1139.
• October 21: Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Straits of Magellan in 1520.
• October 22: Charles Martel, king of the Franks, died in 741.
• October 23: Sweyn III of Denmark is killed in 1157.
• October 24: (DMNES team was out of town w/o internet access).
• October 25: Henry V of England defeated the French at Agincourt in 1415.
• October 26: Feast day of St Demetrius of Thessaloniki, who died in 306.
• October 27: Emperor Constantine had his Vision of the Cross in 312.
• October 28: Margaret I of Denmark died in 1412.
• October 29: Conradin, king of Sicily and Jerusalem, died in 1268.
• October 30: Cesare Borgia hosted the Banquet of Chestnuts in 1501.
• October 31: Nikephoros I became Byzantine emperor in 802.

Devon: You sure are weird

I love 16th C English parish registers: You can find so many unusual things in them! (“Dennis the Irishemans bastard” still remains one of my favorite). The last couple of days I’ve been working through some from Devon. Devon is in a relatively unique situation in England, nameswise, with its proximity to Cornwall which managed to retain some distinctive names even to the end of the 16th C, despite the English influence. Quite often you can find an unusual name in either county which Withycombe will note as being of Cornish origin, or more common in Devon and Cornwall than in any other place. It’s where I’ve found pre-1600 examples of Melanie (in the form Mellany); forms of the Cornish saint’s name Meliora; Ruby (thus contradicting Withycombe’s claim that this is a modern invention); Rabige (haven’t a clue on this one!); the unusual Dewnes or Dunes which I might have thought was an error for Dennis were it not for the multiple instances in different parishes; and now, to cap it off: a very clearly female Paskow, which name I had previously thought was exclusively masculine. But it’s hard to go against hard evidence in the form of “Peter Hubert and Paskow his wife”. I’ve found feminine forms of Pask and Pascal in French, Spanish, and Italian before, but never in England!

I’ve only just touched upon the parish registers from Devon, so I’m sure I’ll find lots more in the future. Look for all these names, and more, in the Dictionary in September!