It’s week 11 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge, and the topic is Flowers. I decided to take a slightly different approach and write about my maternal family’s surname, LaViolet or Laviolette, which literally means “the violet” in French. Laviolette is the 844th most popular surname in Quebec, but not all Laviolettes of French-Canadian descent have the same founding ancestor. To understand why, you must first understand the dit.
If you are from French-Canadian descent and trace your family roots back far enough, you will eventually come across your own “dit” (pronounced “dee”) and probably scratch your head in confusion the first time you see a name like Jean Roy dit Boulanger. Dit names are secondary surnames which were used to differentiate branches of the same family. There may be many branches of the Roy family, but a name like Roy dit Boulanger would indicate those Roys were bakers or came from bakers. Dit names didn’t always signify an occupation. They could indicate the town or region the family was from, like dit Champagne, a mother’s maiden name, a father’s first name, and dit names were also commonly given during military service. Prior to military identification numbers, a soldier was assigned a secondary “war name” as a means of identification, and that name could be passed down through the generations until a branch decided to differentiate with their own dit name.
My original, fresh-off-the-boat Laviolette ancestor was Jacques Jahan dit Laviolette, who was born in Blois, Orleanais, France on June 12, 1629. He was one of the earliest settlers of Quebec, showing up in records for the first time in 1656. He was truly a pioneer. When he arrived in Quebec, it was a vast wilderness with less than 100 houses. Plenty of people, I'd even wager most people, who share the surname Laviolette are not his descendants. His surname, “Jahan,” is derived from the name “Jean.” His secondary surname, “Laviolette,” was commonly given to soldiers and servants in feudal France, so Jacques Jahan dit Laviolette’s ancestors were likely either servants or soldiers. Most believe his father, Sebastian Jahan dit Laviolette, was a French soldier.
Because the name was often used for both soldiers and servants, and many people in feudal France fell into those categories, Laviolette was fairly common as either a primary or secondary surname. Over 40 surnames are connected to Laviolette, such as our own Jahan dit Laviolette, Blouin dit Laviolette, Rufiange dit Laviolette, and Laviolette dit Dumont.
The use of dit names began to wane in the 1700s as French-Canadians started to use one name exclusively over another. Sometimes siblings within the same family would opt for different names. One sibling could drop Jahan in favor of Laviolette or drop Laviolette in favor of Jahan. By the early 20th century, the practice of secondary surnames died out.
Names change and evolve over time. Whether or not you've noticed, when I write about my grandfather and his family, I use two spellings -- the traditional Laviolette and LaViolet. That's because at some point in the 1950s, my grandfather changed the spelling of his name from Philip Lewis Laviolette to Philip Lewis LaViolet. No one in the family is 100% sure why. He used to tell us that when he was in the military, the Army thought his name was pronounced lav-uh-LET-ee, and he was Italian, so he was placed with an entire unit of Italians. He said they only fed them spaghetti, and he grew so sick of it that he changed his name as soon as he returned from WWII. We believed it growing up, but obviously that was just a tall tale. My mom told me that there was someone in the military with the same exact name and when he kept receiving his mail from the V.A. by mistake, he grew frustrated and annoyed with it, so he changed the spelling of his name. She also thinks he may have wanted to anglicize his name. No one knows for certain. No one in the family is even positive he went through any legal channels to change it. I have all of his old papers, and there’s no paperwork indicating a name change (and the man kept everything!). We think he started using it on documents and just kept doing so until it stuck. Maybe he wrote the V.A. an angry letter, all capitalized and underlined in red, and demanded a name change. Who knows? At least his first two children were born as Laviolettes, but at some point, he went down to the city clerk’s office and told them to write up new birth certificates with the LaViolet spelling. They did it. No questions were asked. Record keeping was certainly lax in the 1950s. 100 years from now, maybe one of my cousin’s great-grandkids will further change or modify the name, though I’m sure they’ll have to jump through more legal hoops than Grampy Phil!
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