house names

Fascinating, isn't it? Think of all those lives lived in your houses!

We are lucky, the old houses in our village formed part of an academic study in the 1970s and were re-examined again in the last five years. It means we know exactly how old our house is, who built it and that he was fined by the manor court for blocking the highway with building materials when doing so - and we thought skips blocking the road were a new phenomenon!

Mamie It's not just France. We have a similar village problem in the UK. We didn't want to give our house a name but the PO insisted - so it is Anonym House

I wonder if they will ever give us a number? No-one has approached us yet. Perhaps they gave up, we used to just be house name then village name, in one place. I think someone else mentioned that earlier. Some roads have several names, depending on which direction the locals approach it from.

I get a lot of very confused delivery men around this way in the lead-up to xmas!

I love house names though, they are more individual and you feel you have a picture of the inhabitants, even if you are completely wrong. My mother's last cottage was Rose Cottage and she is definitely more the thorny type.

janerowena do hope your Mother won't be reading this!

Postmen soon get used to knowing which house is which, but yes, delivery men, that's another subject, especially as a lot now are foreign.

My postman is dyslexic, I'm sure of it!

The address of our last house was Blenheim Avenue. A few years after we moved in a development of flats was built on the corner of another road about 100 yards away and despite the complaints of many Blenheim Avenue residents it was called 'Blenheim Court'

Despite having different postcodes, both postmen and delivery drivers persistently delivered letters and parcels to the right number but the wrong address.

It shows they don't read the whole address, and what is the point of having a postcode if THEY don't use it?!

Our last house in the UK was called 'Threeways' - friends often laughed and said we were not very imaginative ;)

Our current house has had its name since 1587- La Cure (the Vicarage)- and is now called 'l'Ancienne Cure' (the old Vicarage).

I love that Granjura. Lots of houses here called things like "l'ancienne maison Dubois", even though the family moved out 20 years ago. I do think the one postcode for several communes is daft though.

Thanks granjura now I realise where we get the name 'curate' from!The Normans, bless them!

There is a street at the other side of town which has almost the same name as mine - mine is X Road, the other X Street. Letters are always arriving here for the Street.

Recently I was accosted by a man with a briefcase who was looking for X Court. "It is somewhere near here", said he.

"No", I replied, "I have lived here for nearly 50 years and I have never heard of it. With a name like X Court it must be a new development in someone's garden, and there are none around here. It must be near X Street, down off Easter Road. Try there."

"No, it's here," he insisted, "It says so in my instructions from the office."

"Sorry, I can't help you then," so off he went.

I looked it up on Google Maps. Yes, a small development of new housing down near Easter Road. But what did I know? I have only lived here since 1967. He had been sent by Head Office.

Rosesarered- the Normans were of course not French at all- but Vikings- and only cousins to 'our' Harold and entourage. The French really mocked their strange accent and clumsy use of the language.

Is that right Granjura? I thought they were nowhere near speaking French round here then? Given that a lot of older people still speak patois now? I have even found similarities to English in some patois words, which bear no resemblance to modern French.

I call mine 'The Hovel'...

Will have to do some reading around the subject again Mamie- but I remember reading that their French was considered 'weird' and so was their accent. Norman = Norse man = Viking.

Harold and William were cousins from the same Viking line, were they not?

I just love language- and learning new things. So as my Quebec friend says, I'll go to bed tonight less stupid.

I had no idea about the Norvegian word for 'to slide' = to ski. Wonderful.

History
Further information: Old Norman

When Norse invaders from modern day Denmark and Norway arrived in the then-province of Neustria and settled the land that became known as Normandy, they gradually adopted the Gallo-Romance speech of the existing populations – much as Norman rulers in England later adopted the speech of the administered people. However, in both cases, the élites contributed elements of their own language to the newly enriched languages that developed in the territories.

In Normandy, the new Norman language inherited vocabulary from Norse. The influence on phonology is more disputed, although it is argued that the retention of aspirated /h/ and /k/ in Norman is due to Norse influence.

Examples of Norman words of Norse origin:
Norman English Old East Norse French Modern Norwegian
bel court, yard (cf. bailey?) bǿli cour (cf. bal) bøl
bète bait (borrowed from Norman) bæita appât beta
kanne can kanna cruche kanne
guernotte, guénotte, jarnotte earth nut, ground nut, pig nut, peanut jorðnotr terre-noix jordnøtt,peanøtt
gradile, gradelle, gadelle (black)currant gaddʀ cassis, groseille vinbær
greyer prepare græiða préparer greie
griller, égriller slide, slip skriðla glisser skli
hardelle girl hóra (whore) fille (cf. hardi) hore (prostitute)
hèrnais cart (cf. harness) járnaðʀ (shod (horse)) charrette (cf. harnais, harnacher) jernet
hommet/houmet islet (diminutive of hou) hulmʀ îlot holme
hou islet ( cf. holm, mainly in placenames) hulmʀ îlot holm
hougue mound ( cf. howe, high) haugʀ monticule haug
mauve seagull mávaʀ (pl.) gaviote (Pre-Norman) /
mouette (Post-Norman) måke,måse
mielle dune mjalʀ dune dyne
mucre damp (cf. muggy) mygla humide mugg (mildew)
nez headland or cliff (cf. Sheerness, etc.) næs falaise (cf. nez) nes
viquet wicket (borrowed from Norman) víkjas guichet (borrowed from Norman) vik

In some cases, Norse words adopted in Norman have been borrowed into French – and more recently some of the English words used in French can be traced back to Norman origins.
A bar named in Norman

Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, the Norman language spoken by the new rulers of England left traces of specifically Norman words that can be distinguished from the equivalent lexical items in French:
English Norman French
fashion < faichon = façon
cabbage < caboche = chou (cf. caboche)
candle < ca(u)ndelle = chandelle, bougie
castle < castel (now catè) = château, castelet
cauldron < caudron = chaudron
causeway < caucie (now cauchie)[4] = chaussée
catch < cachier (now cachi)[5] = chasser
cater < acater = acheter
cherry (ies) < cherise (chrise, chise ) = cerise
mug < mogue/moque[6] = mug, boc
poor < paur = pauvre
wait < waitier (old Norman) = gaitier (mod. guetter )
war < werre (old Norman) = guerre
warrior < werreur (old Norman) = guerrier
wicket < viquet = guichet (cf. piquet)

Other words such as captain, kennel, cattle and canvas introduced from Norman exemplify how Norman retained a /k/ from Latin that was not retained in French.

Norman immigrants to North America also introduced some "Normanisms" to Quebec French and French in Canada generally. Joual, a working class sociolect of Quebec in particular exhibits a Norman influence. Some expressions that are currently in use in Canada are: abrier for [y faut s'abrier, y fait frète!], barrure for [barre], ber for [berceau], bers for [ridelles d'un chariot ou berceau], bleuet for [myrtille], boucane for [fumée], boucaner for [fumer ou quereller] (also used in modern French), champelure (Norm. campleuse) for [robinet], croche for [tordu], fricot for [festin], gourgannes for [fêves de marais], gourgane for [bajoue de porc fumée], gricher (Norm. grigner) for [grimacer], grafigner for [gratter légèrement et sans cesse], graffigner for [égratigner], ichite or icite for [ici], itou for [aussi], jouquer or juquer for [jucher], maganer for [malmener], mitan for [milieu], marganner for [déganer], maganer for [maltraiter ou malmener], mi-aout for [quinze août] (also available in modern French), pigoche for [cheville], pognie for [poignée], pomonique for [pulmonique], quasiment for [presque] (also used in modern French), racoin for [recoin], ramarrer for [rattacher], ramucrir, for [devenir humide], mucrerancer for [avoir la respiration gênée et bruyante, lever, pousser avec un levier], ressoudre for [réveiller, activer], relever,roteux,euse for [qui rote, roteur], tasserie for [lieu où l'on tasse la récolte des gerbes de blé, d'orge, ou d'avoine], train for [être ivre], train de for [être occupé à] (also available in modern French), sacraer for [sacrer (arrête de sacrer!)], v'lin for [venin], vlimeux for [velimeux], v'lo for [voilà], y for [il, ils, elles (qu'est-ce qu'y fait ?)] zius for [yeux].[7]
See also

Um, don't know. I do remember reading Graham Robb's The Discovery of France and being gobsmacked by how late it was before people started speaking French here.
This is interesting:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_language
I know they say les petios sont bios (no idea how to write it) round here; but not sure how much that is true patois? People are always trying to teach me though...

Cross post! I can't remember what the words were that we found in common, but I think we were talking about butter churning ( the way you do round here...)

les petiots = the little ones (children) is used all over France. Not sure about the 'bios' though.

Bio = beau. My neighbour always says of my OH and the organic garden, "il est bio (beau) et il est bio.
The real patois words are obviously a bit vulgar and accompanied by shrieks of laughter.

Wow, what a tour de force. Fascinating, thank you.

Wonderful, thank you, I love seeing how languages evolve.

Granjura thanks for so much info on the Normans, language is a strange and ever evolving thing.I knew they were fairly recent settlers in France and had Viking roots, didn't they only settle there for about 150 years before the invasion of England? There, we have never REALLY been beaten by the French, and that proves it, ha-ha!
It explains why we have 2 words quite often for the same thing.....
sheep [in the field] mutton [mouton] on the table
pigs in the field, pork [porc]on the table
cows, cattle in the field, beef[boef] on the table etc.