12/04/2025
GENEALOGY ADDICT - DID YOU KNOW ?
Dit Names: Spoken Memory in Nouvelle-France
When the first settlers crossed from France to Québec in the 17th century, they carried more than tools and prayers. They carried names — and often, they carried two.
A dit name (from the French dit, meaning “said” or “called”) was a second surname, a spoken marker of place, kinship, or survival. It wasn’t a legal title, but a lived one. A man might be born Simard, but known as Simard dit Lombrette — Lombrette being the name of the land he settled, the family who raised him, or the trait that defined him.
These names helped distinguish one branch from another in a colony where surnames multiplied and records blurred. A dit name might reflect:
- Geography: La Rochelle, Lombrette, Beaupré — anchoring the settler to a place.
- Occupation or trait: Lejeune, Le Sage, La Forge — marking skill or character.
- Adoption or gratitude: honoring a godparent, a maternal line, or a family who took them in.
- Military service: soldiers often received dit names to distinguish themselves within regiments.
Some names were passed down. Others faded after a generation. Some families kept both names, others dropped one or the other depending on the parish, the scribe, or the season.
For genealogists, dit names are both a gift and a puzzle. They reveal movement, kinship, and story — but they also complicate the trail. One man might appear in records under three names, depending on who wrote them and when.
But for descendants, dit names are a kind of spoken memory. They remind us that identity was never fixed — it was shaped by land, labor, and love.
To read Simard dit Lombrette is to hear the echo of Puymoyen carried across the sea, stone laid in Beaupré, and a father and son choosing the unknown together.
Historical Timeline
- 17th century (New France):
- The name Lombrette appears in colonial records as a dit name and as a concession of land in the Beaupré area.
- It was used to distinguish branches of families (e.g., Simard dit Lombrette) and to anchor them to a specific tract of land.
- There was no incorporated municipality or parish called Lombrette at this time.
- The dit name Lombrette means “a little shade.” One tradition holds that the Simard family was not tall and thus cast small shadows; another maintains that a village of this name existed near Puymoyen. Yet no evidence of such a place has been found near Puymoyen or Angoulême, France.
Final Thoughts:
In the end, Lombrette was not a village carried from France, but a name rooted in New France — a spoken memory that marked one branch of the Simards as they laid stone in Beaupré. ©
