Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 735

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 735

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/735

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Greetings,

Here's the information we found about "Andrivaire," which you'd like to use as a French name from between 1150 and 1300.

We found no evidence that "Andrivaire" was a French name, and it doesn't follow the patterns of French naming.

There are a number of names based on French forms of "Andrew." However, they all follow a set of fairly predictable rules. As an analogy, in English most common names have forms ending in "y"--"John" becomes "Johnny," "Andrew" becomes "Andy," and so on. These altered forms of names are called "diminutives."

In medieval French, "-vaire" was not used as a diminutive suffix, so "Andrivaire" is not a plausible French name. However, we did find something which comes close.

One of the common forms of "Andrew" in medieval French was "Andriu." One of the common diminutive endings is "-el." When "-el" is added to a name ending in "u," the "u" changes to a "v." Thus "Andriu" is changed to "Andrivel." We were able to find a record of the name "Andrivel" from 1475, (1) and we are fairly sure that it would be appropriate for the 13th century as well.

Arval Benicouer, Talan Gwynek, and Livia Montgomery contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel

(1) Dauzat, A. Dictionnaire Etymologique des Noms de Famille et Prenoms de France, Libraire Larousse, Paris, 1987.