If you have spent any time in French-Canadian records, you have seen it: a name written as “X dit Y,” two surnames yoked together by a small French word. These dit names are the single most distinctive—and most confusing—feature of French-Canadian naming, and misunderstanding them is one of the most common reasons a family tree hits a wall. Here is what they are, where they came from, and how to keep them from stopping you.
What a dit name is
Dit means “called” or “said.” A dit name is a second, alternative surname attached to a family: “Bourbeau dit Lacourse” means, roughly, “Bourbeau, called Lacourse.” Both are the family’s name. In the records, the same family—even the same person—might be written as “Bourbeau,” as “Lacourse,” or as the full “Bourbeau dit Lacourse,” depending on the clerk, the moment, and the branch. The dit name is not an error or an alias in the criminal sense; it is a genuine parallel surname.
Where dit names came from
Dit names arose for several reasons, and knowing the type sometimes hints at an ancestor’s story:
- Military nicknames. Soldiers, including those of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, were given noms de guerre—nicknames evoking a place, a trait, or nature. When they settled, the nickname often became a hereditary dit name.
- Place of origin. A family might be distinguished by the region or town they came from—“dit Lavergne,” “dit Champagne”—marking a French province or locality.
- Distinguishing branches. When one surname grew crowded in a district, branches adopted dit names to tell themselves apart—a practical necessity in a population with so few surnames.
- A trait or a mother’s line. Some dit names recall a personal characteristic or honor another family line.
Why dit names matter so much for research
Here is the crucial consequence: over generations, different branches of a single immigrant’s descendants kept different names. One branch carried the original surname, another adopted the dit name as its only surname, and a third hyphenated or alternated. The upshot is that people with completely different surnames today can descend from the same founder—and, conversely, that a line which seems to vanish has very often just switched between its two names in the records.
This is why a huge share of French-Canadian brick walls are really dit-name problems. The ancestor did not disappear; they were simply recorded under the other name in the next document.
The practical rule: always search both names. When a line goes cold, check whether the family carried a dit name and run the search again under it. The image-linked index at Généalogie Québec makes it easy to test both names against the original records and confirm you are following the same family.
Dit names in the United States
When families migrated south, the dit name often decided which surname stuck. A family recorded in Québec as “X dit Y” might, in a New England mill town, simply become “Y” (or “X”) on American records—sometimes then anglicized on top of that. For Franco-American researchers, recognizing that a “different” American surname is really the family’s old dit name is often the key that reopens the Québec records.
How to handle dit names
- Learn the dit name(s) attached to your families—published dit-name dictionaries and lists catalog thousands of them.
- Search every record under both the surname and the dit name.
- When a line stalls, treat a dit-name switch as the first suspect before assuming the record is missing.
- Record both names in your tree so descendants and cousins can find the connection.
When dit names and spelling changes tangle a paternal line, Y-DNA can cut through it: a Y-DNA test (FamilyTreeDNA runs the surname projects best suited to this) shows whether two same-surname lines actually share a direct paternal ancestor. It’s a niche, paternal-line tool—see our DNA guide for where it fits.
Recommended reading (available on Amazon):
- French-Canadian Surnames: Aliases, Adulterations and Anglicizations (Robert J. Quintin)
- Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec (René Jétté)
Frequently asked questions
Is a dit name the same as an alias?
Not in the criminal sense. A dit name is a legitimate second surname a family genuinely carried; records use it interchangeably with the primary surname.
Can two people with different surnames share an ancestor because of dit names?
Yes—commonly. Different branches of one immigrant’s descendants often kept different names (the surname versus the dit name), so unrelated-looking surnames can share a single founder.
Reading a dit name in a record
In the registers, a dit name can appear in several forms, and recognizing them all is part of the skill. You may see the full “Bourbeau dit Lacourse,” or just “Bourbeau,” or just “Lacourse,” in different records for the same person. Sometimes the clerk reverses which name leads. Occasionally the “dit” is dropped and the two names simply sit side by side. Treat any of these as a flag that the family carried a second surname, and make a note of both forms the moment you spot one—your future self, searching for a “missing” record, will thank you.
Some well-known dit-name patterns
Many dit names began as soldiers’ noms de guerre, and a recognizable set of these military nicknames recurs across French-Canadian families—names evoking cheer, flowers, or qualities, attached to a primary surname:
- dit Lafleur, dit Larose, dit Jolicœur, dit Lafrance, dit Lajeunesse, dit Laliberté, dit Sansregret, dit Belhumeur — classic soldier dit names, found paired with many different surnames.
- Place-based dit names such as dit Champagne or dit Lavergne, marking a French region of origin.
Because the same dit name (say, “Lafleur”) was attached to many unrelated families, a dit name alone does not prove a connection—it is the pairing of a specific surname with a specific dit name in your line that matters.
A worked example
Imagine your line runs through a New England family named “Larose,” and it stalls in the mid-1800s. Suspecting a dit name, you find a Québec record for the same family written “Beaudry dit Larose.” Searching “Beaudry” instead of “Larose,” the line suddenly continues for three more generations—because the family had simply been recorded under its primary surname before the dit name took over in the United States. That single switch, from one name to the other, is the most common dit-name rescue there is.
A gift, not just an obstacle
It is easy to treat dit names purely as a nuisance, but they are also one of the richest features of French-Canadian genealogy. A dit name can carry real history—a soldier’s nom de guerre hinting at service in the Carignan-Salières Regiment, or a place name preserving the French region a family came from. It can also connect cousins who would otherwise never realize they share a founder, because their branches kept different names. Once you stop fighting dit names and start reading them, they become a tool that links families and surfaces stories a plain surname would never reveal. The genealogists who handle French-Canadian lines best are simply the ones who expect dit names and check for them by reflex.
