ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1864 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1864 ************************************ From: "Sara L Friedemann" 28 Nov 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if is an authentic early 13th century Occitan masculine name. Here is the information we have found. We found a number of Occitan forms of in the early 13th century: , , , and . [1] Of these, is probably the standardized. Your spelling is possible, but the forms ending in <-ts> or <-tz> are more common than those ending in plain <-t> or <-d>. Of the four spellings listed, any would be a fine choice for your period. We didn't find , but we think that it might be a variant of , a pet form of that is found in the Auvergne. [2] However, we don't know whether it is a 13th century form or a later modification. Since we have seen only spellings like <-son> and <-c,on> [3], we recommend that you use instead. We hope that this letter has been useful to you, and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Talan Gwynek and Walraven van Nijmegen. For the Academy, ~Aryanhwy merch Catmael November 28, 1999 --------------------------------------- References & Notes: [1] Ramons lo Montalbes, "French/Occitan Names From The XII And XIII Century" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1997) [URL:http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/ramon/occitan/]. [2] Dauzat, Albert, _Dictionnaire Etymologique des Noms de Famille et Prenoms de France_ (Paris: Libraire Larousse, 1987). s.n. Belisson [3] The represents the c-cedilla; in this specific instance, it is pronounced \s\.