The name "Jazzer" -- need for studies on humorous French names

[Gerald Cohen]

>At 1:31 PM -0400 10/12/03, Marc Picard wrote:
>>
>I don't understand why you insist on trying to find a French origin
>for jazzer since the word is part of American slang since way back
>when. And it has nothing to do with chattering or gossiping.
>

"Way back when" is 1912 or 1913. (There's an 1831 attestation
"jazzing," written by Lord Palmerston about the French diplomat
Talleyrand, where the term does refer to chattering and almost
certainly is taken directly from French: "I am writing in the
Conference, Matusevic copying out a note for our signature, old
Talley[rand] jazzing and telling stories to Lieven and Esterhazy and
Wessenberg."

   This 1831 attestation is totally isolated and best set aside when
trying to determine the origin of American "jazz.")

   An April 5, 1913 article in the San Francisco Bulletin (newspaper)
refers to "jazz" as a word which just entered the language. Now we
know there was at least some limited used of the term a year earlier.
But that's it. Setting aside the isolated British 1831 attestation,
that's the extent of the early attestations.

    So, when George Thompson spots an 1896 name "Jazzer" (with some
earlier attestations as a name), this "Jazzer" cannot be explained as
deriving from slang "jazz." There are no attestations of slang "jazz"
at this early time.

   This is the motivation for looking elsewhere for the origin of the name, and
French "jaseur" is too promising to be set aside without a close look.
What we really need here is a detailed study of humorous French names
in the U.S. Do any such studies exist? Might "Jazzer" have been a
humorous French name attached to African-Americans? What about
humorous names within the Cajun community? I know for sure that at
least some existed.

Gerald Cohen