St. Louis?

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Koontz John E wrote:
> > The name means "short bread". I believe the name occurs elsewhere in
> > the Francophone word, maybe in Ontario. It is not a surname as far as I
> > know.
>
> Could it be a "dit name"?

I'm afraid that the following does not clarify anything.  In fact, it
complicates it by seeming to support any and all of the suggestions so
far, not to mention some others.  One wonders if there might not be a
confluence of ideas involved.  Perhaps as the hardy voyageur poles his
boat up the Missouri, his eyes focussed sharply on the shore, yet somehow
distant, abstracted, he is thinking not of furs, but of elaborate
three-level puns that will really knock their socks off the next time he
casually drops one into conversation at Sarpy's store.

====

First, for what it's worth there was once a French mathematician surnamed
Painleve
(http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Painleve.html),
pain leve (raised bread) being the opposite of pain court in the sense of
short bread.

Looking along those lines on the Web:  There are places named Paincourt or
Paincourtville in Ontario and Louisiana (and formerly in the Missouri).
See http://www.onterm.gov.on.ca/geo/details_e.asp?letter=p&ind=51 for a
list of Ontario placenames.  The Canadian locality was an early French
settlement (http://www.inforoute.on.ca/fron/colo.html,
http://www.francoplanete.net/tricentenaire/Histoire/DeveloppementFrancais.htm).


There's a rue de Paincourt in Chateauroux, France, and a rue or r[ou]te de
Paincourt in Clairefontaine en Yvelines.

References to St. Louis as Paincourt, invariably glossed "short of bread":
http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=lhbum7689g&hc=10&ifr=1&gss=angs&ct=2851&clx=PrvRec.
http://www.common-place.org/vol-03/no-04/st-louis/http://www.common-place.org/vol-03/no-04/st-louis/
http://www.uwgb.edu/wisfrench/library/history/language.htm

The last says:

> It is impossible to utilize French colonial documents as historical
> sources without understanding the penchant of the French of the time to
> use nicknames even in formal legal papers. Colonial Ste-Geneviève, now
> our St. Genevieve, Missouri, was also known as Misère or "poverty," and
> St.  Louis itself was known to many as Paincourt, said to mean "short on
> bread." The principle of homophony or sound resemblance can be used to
> derive the French nickname Louis Constant for Prairie du Chien, for many
> years a place of rendezvous for traders on the Mississippi just above
> the mouth of the Wisconsin River. L'ouisconsin (The Wisconsin) became
> Louisconstant or Louis Constant (steadfast Louis).

This was put together by "Robert Hall ... Professor Emeritus of
Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Adjunct Curator
of Midwestern and Plains Archaeology at the Field Museum, Chicago." a name
some of us will know.  Substantially similar things occur in the other
discussions.  I don't know the origin of the analysis.

I did finally locate a reference to Paincourt as a dit name for
Deroches.

Desroches - Boucher, Laroux, Tinon, Lafontaine, Paincourt

http://www.geocities.com/emersos/canadian_names.html

> What are dit names ?
>
> A "dit name" is an alias given to a family name. Compared to other alias
> or a.k.a. that are given to one specific pers on, the dit names will be
> given to many persons.  It seems the usage exists almost only in France,
> New France and in Scotland where we find clans or septs.  Many of the
> soldiers of the Carignan Regiment who came here in 1665-1668, lived
> around Dauphine. While they were not the only ones nor the first to use
> dit names in New France, it seems those soldiers are responsible, for a
> great extent, the dit names reached in Quebec compared to France, Acadia
> or Louisiana.

For Paul Deroches, dit Paincourt, see
http://marchif.crosswinds.net/texte/57/57804.html.

As far as the homophony of the name, "I have other info. which indicates
that Charles was born in Ontario ("Pan Couer" which I now believe to be
Paincourt, Ontario)."  Coeur is 'heart'.

And, for what it's worth, it seems that paincourt (and several other
pain-based words like painboeuf, paincuit, etc.) have some significance to
French and/or German gay males which I have elected not to further
investigate at this time.  That list does suggest to me, however, that
paincourt might also be rendered shortcake(s).