Tired of Pain Court yet?

[Michael Mccafferty]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 11:10:57 -0500
From: MARC PICARD <picard at VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA>
Reply-To: American Name Society <ANS-L at LISTSERV.BINGHAMTON.EDU>
To: ANS-L at LISTSERV.BINGHAMTON.EDU
Subject: Re: Place names


On Vendredi, avril 2, 2004, at 06:11  am, Michael Mccafferty wrote:

> Yes, the pin court or pins courts was the suggestion that  i made
> to the Siouan discussion list. No one seemed to like it, but it was the
> only thing that made sense. I'll restate that position to that list.


Marc Picard dixit:

Actually, both of us may have been a little hasty in our conclusion. 
What I've found is that there's a place in Ontario called Pain Court 
(formerly Paincourt) and that, lo and behold, there are six places in 
France by the name of Paincourt or Le Paincourt (as you can check on 
the IGN website). So what we have here may simply be a case of the 
transposition of a French placename.


Etymologically, Paincourt has almost surely nothing to do with 'bread' 
and 'short'. The -court part is a very common placename ending from Old 
French cort 'farm'. The pain- part is probably a person's name if one 
is to judge by the frequency of such structures as found in Dauzat and 
Rostaing's Dictionnaire étymologique des noms de lieux en France 
(which, unfortunately, doesn't include hamlets like Paincourt).

Marc Picard
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