[ANSTHRLD] Re: Noirjean is feminine" Mais non!; was re:Heralds Digest, Vol 2, Issue 18

[Sara L Friedemann]

Quoth "Pafra & Scott":
> I believe that someone may have misread the French which gives as examples
> of compounds of "noir" with a baptismal name, Noirabel, Noirclair, --cle`re,
> Noirclaude, Noirjean (pp. 731-732, Morlet, DENF.  Of the above, only
> Noircle`re is most probably a feminine name.  Claude is not mentioned as a

No, I made a mistaken assumption that Maridonna corrected.  When
she said that she was trying to form a matronymic along some
examples, I assumed the examples she gave were feminine.  She
corrected me, and already knew, that they weren't.

> feminine given name in Morlet although the popular form of Claude was Claud,
> showing how the feminine form could have arisen through a popular belief
> that the more learned form Claude was actually the feminine of the popular
> Claud.

It's not so much that it "could have arisen" but that it did:

<Claude> is found 9 times as a masculine name and twice as a
feminine name (same spelling for both genders), in my article
"Names from a 1587 Tax Roll from Provins"
(http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/provins1587.html).  The
source I worked from listed women as either daughters of their
father or wives of their husband, so I know clearly that the
two examples of <Claude> were indeed feminine.

-Aryanhwy


 
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