Re: French surnames (was; De Dion, requisite content)

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

In AD8-0100 Alan Lambert, responding to Michael Williams, writes "As a
frenchman, I can tell you that a "de" in front is a noble appelation, and is
never capitalized."

 Yes, but - -  (insert smiley of choice, or, with Michael, "Tongue firmly
planted in cheek") - -

 Is that as a frenchman or as a Frenchman? (don't ask doug - - please!) and
why is it not l'Ambert?

 I will quibble about tense. As a Swede, (actually, as an American who can
with license claim to be of Swedish-American ancestry, except somewhat
mongrelized) I suggest that a "de" in front of a French surname WAS a noble
appelation, but IS an ignoble pretension. A convenient example is the French
impressionist painter Edgar Degas, who visited New Orleans (not Nouvelle
Orleans) in the former colony of Louisiana where his cousins, the de Gas
family, were in business as cotton-factors. (Note archaism.) As a certified
card-carying pinko I will claim that there are no noblemen in France, Italy,
Germany, or the United States.

 But there are those who still believe that liberte, egalite, fraternite are
transient conditions until the old order is re-established. The entry under
Degas in the biographical section of Larousse reads "DEGAS (Edgar de Gas,
dit).

 Tangent: Michael asked "(was it perhaps Man of Hertz long ago?)". Clouded in
the mists of history; an alternate hypothesis is that it was once
Cyclespersecondman. It came to me through Sweden, but relatively rare
instances occur around the periphery of the Baltic, suggesting migration
during the persecutions of the counterreformation. It was never von Hertz, as
far as I know, which would have been the German equivalent of 'de'; strictly
peasant, if you couldn't tell.

 John H.

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