Full text of DOI:10.1016/S1081-602X(00)00036-1

SURNAMES, MARRIAGE,
AND CONSANGUINITY IN
EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH
CENTURY HAUTE-PROVENCE
ALAIN COLLOMP
ABSTRACT: A study of the stem family system in a group of villages in Haute-
Provence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reveals the existence of
a high degree of isonymy (same-namedness). The sources employed were marriage
contracts and parish registers permitting genealogical reconstitution. Does isonymy
always signify a marriage between close relatives bearing the same name? In fact,
although the spouses might share a common ancestor, that ancestor might date
back many generations. The relatively frequent occurrence of marriages among
homonymous spouses should not be interpreted as absolute proof of a union
between close relatives. Indeed, heteronymic alliances, even exogamic ones, can
hide a marriage between first cousins, if consanguinity is transmitted by the
mothers.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past 30 years, researchers from such disciplines as anthropology, biology,
and genetics have studied the high concentration of identical surnames in certain
population groups, more often than not inhabitants of rural and sometimes isolated
areas. Relying on Claude L e´ vi-Strauss’s definition of the name as a “genealogical
marker” (L e´ vi-Strauss 1960), the main hypotheses have stipulated that people with
the same surname all descended from the same common ancestor, at least on the
Alain Collomp is a member of the Institute of Mediterranean and Comparative Ethnology of the
National Center for Scientific Research (Institut d’Ethnologie M e´ diterran e´ enne et Comparative,
C.N.R.S.), Universit e´ s d’Aix-Marseille I and III, France.
THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY An International Quarterly, Volume 5, Number 2, pages 243–254
Copyright  2000 Elsevier Science Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISSN: 1081-602X

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father’s side. With the help of archival material demonstrating the existence of
isonymy among groups of names, and often taking into account marriages between
homonymous spouses, formulas combining several factors were devised, producing
in a mean coefficient of consanguinity (Crow and Mange 1965).
For several reasons, I will not use statistics in this article, although they have
produced some very interesting developments and applications. The first of these
reasons has to do with the method of collecting name groups. From the start,
my own goal was not to collect rigorous figures and submit them to statistical
manipulations, but rather to attempt to understand the functioning of the family
system in Haute-Provence with the help of horizontal and vertical alliances and
genealogies. Thus, my approach is closer to that of an anthropological historian
than to that of a demographer presenting data to specialists in population genetics.
This article focuses on questions pertaining to isonymy, and is based on case
studies of a few villages located in Haute-Provence. The purpose was to check
several hypotheses. Does a high rate of isonymy within a village mean a high degree
of consanguinity among those having the same surname? Or, by contrast, does the
spreading out of surnames signify the absence of consanguinity? Does marriage
among homonyms (persons with the same surname name) necessarily imply alli-
ances between close relatives? Finally, in what way are the so-called parallel or
crossed marriages—which draw from the same stock of surnames and ancestors—a
vector for consanguinity?
Previous research on the transmission of both material and symbolic patrimonies,
marriage, and kinship in Provence (Collomp 1983) has led me to study the particular
topic of surnames. Understanding the naming system of a rural society contributes
to better knowledge of family systems, especially of stem families, in Haute-
Provence. In a collective work discussing naming forms in Europe, I have shown
the importance of isonymy in Haute-Provence, and revealed the existence of what
I believe to be its corollary: the transmission, from generation to generation, of the
nickname as the identifier of a family lineage (Collomp 1980).
THE NAMING SYSTEM
The area I have chosen to study is situated at the head of the upper valley of the
Verdon in Haute-Provence, between Castellane and Colmars-Les-Alpes. This area
includes approximately ten parishes in the mid-mountain range, the smallest of
which was composed of 40 homes and approximately 200 inhabitants in the middle
of the eighteenth century, and the largest one of 150 homes and almost 700 inhabi-
tants in that same period. The economy of these villages consisted of small land-
owning families engaged in agricultural and pastoral activity. Only one village,
Saint-Andr e´ , stood apart as a commercial, transportation, and trading center. In
1
the period studied (1760), the total number of inhabitants was slightly over 3000.
What was the distribution of surnames of household heads in the various villages
of our study? One is immediately struck by the uneven use of a limited stock of
surnames in each parish. In Courchon, according to a 1734 census, no more than
15 surnames identified the 72 household heads. Among them, 30 were named
Reboul, nine Collomb, four Revel, four Boeuf, and four Granet. The remaining ten

Surnames, Marriage, and Consanguinity in Haute-Provence
245
names were borne by one or two households. For each of the small parishes around
Saint-Andr e´ , one or two surnames predominated: Blanc and Bonnefoy in Argens,
Dol and Gibert in Angles. It is significant that in this first group of parishes housing
was concentrated around the village church.
The situation was different in Moriez. In 1730, only one-half of the 140 households
(
72) were clustered around the church and the seigniorial manors. Two hamlets
were located farther away from the parish in a small valley: the largest one, Hy e` ges,
was made up of 43 households, and the other hamlet, Les Chailans, located farther
north, had only 20 families. As in Courchon, but to a greater extent, there was a
concentration of one surname in each hamlet: 33 out of the 43 household heads in
Hy e` ges were called Coulet; 15 out of the 20 household heads in Les Chailans were
called Chailan. On the other hand, the stock of surnames which designated the 72
households of the Moriez parish was much larger—a total of 24. The two most
common names, Michel and Boeuf, each identified ten households.
A similar configuration was found at Saint-Andr e´ , where 29 surnames designated
128 households. However, among these 29 names, five covered more than half of
the households (70); among them Simon was the name of 19 households and F e´ raud
of 15.
What conclusions can be drawn from these data? To be sure, isonymy within
the same village is not limited to eighteenth-century Haute-Provence. It can be
found in many other French regions, not to mention Italy and Spain. Wherever it
can be observed, it is linked to the transmission of land and/or of a patrilocal
household from one male lineage to the next. This mechanism for dividing up the
family patrimony among several brothers of each generation—accompanied by the
establishment of new family units—seems to have been a necessary condition in
the creation of these villages, and especially of the patronymic hamlets. The latter
are frequent in Haute-Provence and in other French regions, such as Auvergne or
Limousin, in the quartiers lignagers or casali (neighborhoods) in the towns of the
Kingdom of Naples (Delille 1985), and in the casati of the Emilie villages (Severi
1980). In these examples, the presence of isonymy means belonging to the same
lineage. Kinship identification was also reflected in the naming of hamlets or towns.
Indeed, the surname became a toponym in anthroponymic hamlets, as in the case
of Chailans in Moriez. Hamlets named after dominant families were numerous in
this part of Haute-Provence. Five existed in Clumanc, a village near Moriez: Les
Bourrillons, Les Souliers, Les Roux, Les Peirons, and Les Pauls. In Provence, the
definite article (les) that precedes the surname is used to name the hamlet. In other
provinces, such as Limousin, the preposition chez (at, derived from the Latin casa)
is more frequently used than the definite article: Chez Fiataud is the name of
one of the numerous hamlets around Oradour-sur-Vayres in the Haute-Vienne
departement.
It is difficult to ascertain whether isonymic households members in these villages
or hamlets were related by kinship ties, and if so, to what degree. Indeed, it is
impossible to confirm or deny that the 33 households located at Hy e` ges and bearing
the name Coulet have all descended from the same ancestor. If this were true, it
would still be impossible to determine for how many generations division of the
same family unit took place.

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One can observe, however, the multiplication of isonymic households, starting
from a common ancestor, if the ancestor’s arrival in the village was relatively recent.
To do so, it is necessary to ensure that his surname differed from all the household
names in the village at the time of his arrival. Two examples illustrate this. The
first involves a certain Jean-Baptiste Rebuffel from Castellane, who settled in Saint-
Andr e´ after his marriage in 1720 with a certain Miss Simon. Rebuffel was not a
name borne by anyone in the villages of the Saint-Andr e´ canton (district); it was
very rarely found in Castellane, but was quite common in S e´ ranon, a village located
farther south between Castellane and Grasse. One century later, six households in
Saint-Andr e´ , all descending from Jean-Baptiste, bore the name Rebuffel. The in-
crease in the number of homonymic households would have been even more rapid
if none of Jean-Baptiste Rebuffel’s four sons had left their homes to emigrate.
The second example is that of Jean Collomp, born in Courchon. When he
opened his tailor shop in Saint-Andr e´ at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
his surname—though a common one in the region—was no longer used by any
family in the village. A few years later, another Collomp, unrelated to the first one
and coming from a more distant village, settled in Saint-Andr e´ as a son-in-law. At
the end of the eighteenth century, not a single descendant of the latter remained
in Saint-Andr e´ , but the six Collomp household heads were the male children of
Jean Collomp’s two sons. One generation later, in 1836, fifteen Collomp households
existed in Saint-Andr e´ . Four of them, more recently established in Saint-Andr e´ ,
did not descend from the tailor nor from any other member of his family. However,
the 11 others were all grandsons or great-grandsons of the original ancestor.
The conclusion one can draw from this second example is that it took four
generations to expand from 1 to 11 households, with only two sons in the second
generation. Can this model be applied to the 15 Chailan isonyms in that hamlet?
If so, four or five generations would be needed to find the common ancestor, and
even more to trace the line back to the common ancestor of the 33 Coulet families
gathered in the Hy e` ges hamlet. Perhaps several homonym ancestors existed who
were not brothers but were more distantly related. Thus, isonymic households at
any given date may not have all descended from the same ancestor. A name such
as Chailan (CastellanusϭCh aˆ telain) was quite frequent and, as with all Provence
surnames, was transmitted from father to son since at least the thirteenth century.
Nominative lists dating back to 1278 mention at least four households bearing this
name and already residing in Castellet-de-la-Robine, a small preserve of the Moriez
castrum, which then became the Chailans hamlet in the eighteenth century (Baratier
1
969, p. 433). Observing such an ancient isonymy without any rigorous form of
genealogical reconstitution encourages the researcher to avoid interpreting hom-
onymy as evidence of a close degree of kinship.
Indeed, the Reboul surname, carried by almost half of the Courchon household
heads; that of Coulet in Hy e` ges; or even that of Simon in Saint-Andr e´ , did not
represent reliable tools for referring to or addressing someone: they were not
accurate enough to identify and distinguish those who carried the same name.
Above all, the surname was a genealogical marker, the identifier of a masculine
lineage. To designate the household or especially the individual, one had to complete
it with other names. The first name was one of these: it was doubtlessly used

Surnames, Marriage, and Consanguinity in Haute-Provence
247
extensively when addressing someone, both in its complete form or in a diminutive
form. As a reference, its efficiency as an identifier was weakened, at any given time,
by the fact that it came from a very limited stock of first names. The onomastic
economy of surnames was accompanied by a deliberate onomastic economy in the
giving of first names. The traditional transmission of the godfather’s and godmoth-
er’s first names to their godchildren was one cause of this paucity. The process
resulted in the reproduction of the same first names, generation after generation,
within a given village and region, and even within the household. Thus, surname
homonyms went hand in hand with first name homonyms.
When faced with this double isonymy (surnames and first names), the villager
(
especially when referring to someone) used a nickname to identify his/her fellow
villager. This, a more personalized name, was attributed by the community to each
individual at some point in his/her life, and usually stayed with that individual until
death. Both men and women received nicknames; sometimes a person had two
nicknames, successively or simultaneously.
One feature of nicknames is worth pointing out: initially simply personal, they
sometimes became hereditary, and were transmitted from one generation to the
next; in these cases, they would be placed right after the surname. The use of a
hereditary nickname was not found in all households. In each village, the practice
was reserved for those whose surnames were the most frequently found. In Saint-
Andr e´ , almost all of the Simon household heads registered as landowners in the
1760 cadastre had a nickname. The coexistence of both the same surname and
nickname in the cadastre definitely underlined the hereditary characteristic of the
nickname. One may find a number of Simon Guidon, Simon Barbon, Simon Gar-
duol, Simon Jaume, Simon Daniel. Also in Saint-Andr e´ , among all those bearing
the surname Chailan, one household, that of mule drivers, was called Chailan Galan.
In some cases, the hereditary nickname even succeeded in hiding the surname.
When thanking his Haute-Provence correspondent for the cheese he had sent, a
bourgeois from Aix named the mule driver who had brought it—Jean Galan—
forgetting to use the surname of Chailan, whose existence he may not have known.
In Courchon, the Reboul households were called Saccoul, Conil, and Lebratoun.
In Hy e` ges, the Coulet households were called Remedi or Remeidi, Lucques, Pelat,
Broche, and Chapelier. In the Chailans hamlet, the Chailan households were called
Terezet, Mut, and Martin.
How long did an inherited nickname survive? Some, such as Coulet Remeidi,
can already be encountered at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Hy e` ges,
and could still be found in notary archives in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Others had a shorter lifespan of two generations, when a father’s own nickname was
passed onto his children. Even more than surnames, nickname isonymy, observed in
a village or hamlet at any given time, signified membership to the same lineage.
Indeed, it is often easier to find the common ancestor of those bearing hereditary
nickname isonyms than of those with the same surnames. As a general rule, the
nickname designation and transmission was more recent. In the 1730 cadastre, the
two households that carried the double name of Coulet Chapelier belonged to two
brothers, sons of a man who had been apprenticed to the hatmaking trade in a
large city and had returned to his home town (a rare occurrence). He did not

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practice his new trade there, but tilled the land belonging to an uncle who had
remained childless. His nickname, given to him as a result of his particular training
and trade, was passed on to the next generation, despite the fact that the trade
itself was never practiced locally.
In the neighboring hamlet of Les Chailans, and in the same 1730 cadastre, 5 of
the 15 Chailan surname households were designated by the same nickname—Martin.
It was placed after the first name, the surname, and the technonym (“son of” or
“son of the late”) according to the following pattern: Pierre Chailan, son of Joseph
Martin; Fran c¸ ois Chailan, son of the late Honor e´ Martin. Genealogical reconstruc-
tion demonstrates that the household heads of these five families were the sons,
and in one case the grandson, of their common ancestor Martin Chailan’s four sons.
The use of the father’s first name, a classical identifier of homonym individuals,
lasted into the next generation through a sort of adjectivization of the first name,
which progressively transformed it into a hereditary nickname. In 1780, more than
a century after the death of his ancestor Martin Chailan, mention was made of
“Joseph Chailan, son of Jean-Joseph, alias Martin.”
What was the significance of the use of hereditary nicknames? When a surname
was so widely used that it rendered any assumption of a common ancestor almost
impossible because of chronological distance or the failure of collective memory,
the nickname was chiefly a means of identifying a masculine lineage and organizing
it in a less confusing manner. Thus, for at least two or three generations, hereditary
nicknames allowed a clearer perception of family ties, at least as far as the paternal
lineage was concerned. In written documents, the hereditary nickname was rarely
used by the priest who drafted the documents for the records offices of the French
state. By contrast, when dealing with the more frequent surnames of the village, the
village notary often registered nicknames in his books. Finally, in each community’s
cadastre the hereditary nickname, when it existed, could always be found right after
the household head’s surname.
The hereditary nickname also served as a convenient reference to the specific
physical or psychological characteristics attributed to each individual by virtue of
his/her hereditary patrimony. Peasants from the Haute-Provence, and undoubtedly
from many other areas, easily established a link between a surname and characteris-
tics specific to a family lineage, when using such expressions as “I hate the Henry
clan,” in reference to all the members of the same family, in this case, that of the
Henrys living in Saint-Andr e´ . To exclaim at Hy e` ges “I hate the Coulet clan” would
not have meant anything, because most villagers were called Coulet. To speak of
the Remedi, Chapelier, or Luques clan made it easier to imagine the common
characteristics of individuals whose kinship links had not yet diminished in memory.
The surname is thus the “lineage classifier” as defined by Claude L e´ vi-Strauss
(
1960). The father’s name was transmitted at birth to all his children, both boys
and girls. In eighteenth-century Provence, women were always designated by their
father’s name, and not by their husband’s name, right up to their deaths. Only in
the nineteenth century did women start using their husband’s name instead of their
own, and only then did the wives’ maiden names disappear from census reports
and other official documents. For widows, no mention was made of their husband’s
name, which was used to designate the children. Testimonies at trials also revealed

Surnames, Marriage, and Consanguinity in Haute-Provence
249
that women were never called upon with their husband’s surname. If they knew
how to sign their name, and even if they had been married for as long as 30 years,
they only used their birth name, that is, their father’s name.
In the seventeenth more than in the eighteenth century, it became a habit to
feminize the father’s name. Women did it themselves when they signed documents:
Anne, Jacques Simon’s daughter at Saint-Andr e´ , who was married for many years
to Jean Henry, a lawyer, signed her name Anne Simonne. Some notaries included
this frequent feminization of surnames in their own deeds and documents: Jeanne
Collombe, daughter of Antoine Collomp; Marie Chailane, daughter of Martin Chai-
lan; Honorade Coulette or Collette, daughter of H e´ ri e´ Coulet; Isabeau Taxilesse,
daughter of Pierre Taxil.
Transmitting the surname to daughters signified that a woman always belonged
to her father’s and brother’s family lineage, even after marriage. However, her own
children, both sons and daughters, would never bear her name, but that of their
father, her husband, a surname she would never have the right to bear.
MARRIAGE
Before discussing the issue of marriage between homonymous spouses, I would
like to underline that in eighteenth-century Haute-Provence, as in all Catholic
countries, marriage among relatives was prohibited by church authorities. Some
prelates, especially the French ones who followed the Cardinal de Lorraine, had
sought to obtain a relaxation of these rules at the Council of Trent to make it
possible for second cousins, or relatives of a fourth degree, to marry. This was
refused. However marriage between cousins was not entirely impossible. Indeed,
this type of union was quite frequent, despite the necessity of a waiver, even for
thrice-removed cousins. For those working for a living—that is, the vast majority
of persons—the procedure was not expensive. But the need to obtain a waiver—the
Church’s way of controlling family relationships and marriages—made villagers and
their parish representatives aware of family relationships that already existed. This
form of control also undoubtedly resulted in creating a sense of guilt in villagers,
who were generally tempted by endogamy. This was especially true for first cousins
who sought to marry each other. The prohibition of marriages among such close
relatives was generally respected by the peasant population in Haute-Provence
villages. During the ancien regime and even toward its end, waiver requests for
first-cousin marriages became fewer and far between, and were granted in only rare
cases. In Haute-Provence, as elsewhere, these waivers were reserved to members of
the nobility. The prohibition of marriage among first cousins was maintained through
the first half of the nineteenth century; requests for waivers submitted to the Basses-
Alpes diocese never exceeded ten per year. Civil marriages among first cousins did
not require any particular formality. Probably hurried to conceal the presence of
an upcoming child, some first-cousin marriages proceeded with the civil ceremony
before obtaining their waiver for the religious celebration. Meanwhile, the family,
as well as the village vicar, would try to obtain the bishop’s intervention (or even
ask for intercession in Rome) to obtain a waiver so that, according to the words
of the priests, “the scandal would cease” (Collomp 1997). Feelings of guilt arising

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THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY Vol. 5/No. 2/2000
FIGURE 1
Blanc-Bonnefoy Marriage
from marriage among close relatives still seem to persist today, as the disapproval
of one village’s inhabitants indicate: “Contrary to what happens in village Y (a
neighboring and enemy village), cousins do not marry here. We find our spouses
elsewhere.”
In eighteenth-century Haute-Provence, there were a large number of marriages
between spouses having the same surname. How could things have been otherwise,
when, as we have seen, almost half and sometimes three-quarters of a village’s
household heads bore the same name? Thus, among a certain number of endoga-
mous marriages, one could find isonymic marriages such as among the Coulets in
Hy e` ges, the Simons in Saint-Andr e´ , or the Rebouls in Courchon. In some marriages
of persons with the same name, the homonym (obviously always coming from the
father) remained limited to that name: for example, Pierre Coulet (son of Jacques
Coulet, alias Frison, and Ang e´ lique Boeuf) married Colombe Coulet (daughter of
Barth e´ l e´ my Coulet and Catherine Chailan) in 1645 at Hy e` ges. Sometimes, the
isonym could also characterize the husband’s mother or his mother-in-law: another
Pierre Coulet (son of H e´ ri e´ Coulet d’Hy e` ges and Catherine Coulet) married Hon-
norade Coulet (daughter of another H e´ ri e´ Coulet d’Hy e` ges and Catherine Ravel)
in 1673. The most perfect isonymy occurred when the parents of the couple had
themselves created an isonymic marriage: in 1697 at Courchon, Claude Reboul
(
(
son of Antoine Reboul and Marguerite Reboul) married Honnorade Reboul
daughter of Pierre Reboul and Anne Reboul). Here was a case where the wife/
mother could transmit her own name on to her children!
Thus, in examining matrimonial isonymy, it is important not to limit oneself to
the husband’s surname. One must also know the names of the husband’s and wife’s
own mothers. One can therefore observe the repetition, on one side or the other
(
rarely in both) as in the last example, of matrimonial isonymy already established
in the previous generation.
Taking into account the mothers’ surnames also encourages us to pay closer
attention to certain heteronymic marriages. In 1734, at Saint-Andr e´ , Simon Simon
(
for the choice of a first name, people were sometimes tempted by this other form
of isonymy), son of Claude Simon and Jeanne Simon, married a woman who had
another surname: Th e´ r e` se Gibert. She was the daughter of Antoine Gibert; however,
her mother, whose name was Claire Simon, carried the same surname as her
daughter’s husband and his two parents. Other heteronymic marriages deserve to
be mentioned. In 1720, at Argens, Joseph Blanc (son of Jean Blanc and Marguerite
Bonnefoy) married Marguerite Bonnefoy (daughter of Joseph Bonnefoy and Cath-
erine Blanc). The bride thus entered a household where her mother-in-law bore
the same surname and first name as herself. And her husband bore the same name
as his mother-in-law (Figure 1).

Surnames, Marriage, and Consanguinity in Haute-Provence
251
In the presence of matrimonial isonymy for spouses as well as for their parents,
therefore, it would not be correct to conclude that they necessarily signified mar-
riages among close relatives. In the small village of Argens, Blanc and Bonnefoy
were the two dominant surnames for many generations. Blanc-Blanc and Bonnefoy-
Bonnefoy marriages were as frequent as Bonnefoy-Blanc marriages. Some of these
marriages did unite close relatives. Others did not, because in these small communi-
ties, surname isonymy, even though it could signify descent from the same common
ancestor, did not prove that this common ancestry was recent. Tangent branches
off the main trunk of the genealogical tree, homonyms did not automatically imply
a close degree of kinship, as was the case with hereditary nicknames.
In the aforementioned marriage between the Rebouls of Courchon, it is probable,
even if not mentioned by the notary, that the two spouses belonged to households
having different nicknames, for example, a Reboul Saccoul and a Reboul Lebratoun.
This could have also been the case for their parents. Thus, matrimonial isonymy
did not prove the existence of an existing family relationship between the two
spouses. Certainty in this realm can only be created by a rigorous genealogical
reconstruction.
In the past, one type of marriage was sought out in Haute-Provence as in other
provinces—the so-called “remarkable” marriage (a rather inappropriate term be-
cause most marriages are remarkable to some degree or the other)—which united
two brothers from household A to two sisters from household B. This type of
marriage is called a parallel union, whereas a crossmarriage involves the union of
a brother and sister from household A with the sister and brother from household
B. These double marriages (triple ones also existed) were celebrated the same day
for some, years apart for others. They were fully authorized by the Church, and
did not require a waiver, because the consanguinity they eventually produced did
not exist when the marriage took place, but could develop later on and only in the
event of a marriage between descendants of these “remarkable” unions. Indeed,
double marriages created a double common foundation, the children born from
these unions being double first cousins in the first generation, and thus doubly
consanguine in the following generations. The very few cases of marriage between
double first cousins that existed were to be found among members of the aristocracy;
however, some examples could also be found among peasants.
The perfect isonymy of the Rebouls of Courchon—that of the newlywed couple
and of each one’s parents—did not correspond either to a double marriage in the
parent’s generation or (in the case of the young newlywed couple) to a marriage
between close cousins. No waiver had been requested for this 1697 marriage. How-
ever, the 1813 marriage at Moustier (a hamlet of Thorame-Basse) between Jean-
Baptiste Arnaud and Marie-Delphine Arnaud, required a waiver. The spouses,
aged 24 and 17 years, respectively, were double first cousins. This “double consan-
guinity” as indicated in the petition for a waiver, was due to the fact that the two
fathers, Jean-Joseph and Etienne Arnaud, were brothers and had married two
sisters, Delphine and Marie-Marguerite Arnaud, mothers of the bride and groom,
respectively. Jean Arnaud, father of the two brothers and Jean-Baptiste Arnaud,
father of the two daughters, and also grandfathers of the newlywed couple, had
lived in two different hamlets of Thorame-Basse, and were homonyms, but probably

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THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY Vol. 5/No. 2/2000
FIGURE 2
Arnaud-Arnaud Marriage
not close relatives. The Arnaud surname was common in the Thorame area and
its hamlets. The bishop granted the waiver (Figure 2).
The same isonymic marriage figures correspond, in one case (that of the Ar-
nauds), to a double consanguinity, and in the other case (that of the Rebouls), to
a union that does not allow one to conclude to the presence of a close relative.
On the other hand, some marriages where isonymy was absent could nonetheless
have constituted unions between first cousins. In 1759, Jean-Joseph Juglar, born in
Saint-Andr e´ and an inhabitant there, married Anne Pyan, daughter of a merchant
from Colmars, a parish located more than 20 kilometers from Saint-Andr e´ . Here
is an example of persons whose geographic exogamy did not prevent a marriage
between close relatives. The spouses were first cousins, because their mothers,
Fran c¸ oise and Anne-Marie Robiony, were sisters. This is the only example of a
marriage between first cousins celebrated at Saint-Andr e´ throughout the eighteenth
century. And the only marriage between first cousins in the entire first half of the
nineteenth century in Saint-Andr e´ occurred within the same lineage two generations
later. In 1831, another Jean-Joseph Juglar, grandson of the Jean-Joseph mentioned
earlier, married F e´ licit e´ Guerandy, the daughter of a bourgeois from Digne, located
more than 40 kilometers from Saint-Andr e´ . She was his first cousin, because his
father, Jean-Baptiste Juglar, was the brother of the young bride’s mother, Henriette
Juglar. The first Jean-Joseph Juglar was both the paternal grandfather of Jean-
Joseph Juglar, the young groom, and the maternal grandfather of F e´ licit e´ Gu e´ randy,
the bride. Likewise, Anne Payan was both the paternal grandmother of the groom,
and the maternal grandmother of the bride. In addition, these shared grandparents
were first cousins themselves. The different links of this genealogical chain, how-
ever, do not suggest matrimonial isonymy. The isonymy that does exist is that of
women, the mothers of the husbands, and this is why it is important to take into
consideration the mothers’ names in the study of both isonymic and heteronymic
unions (Figure 3).

Surnames, Marriage, and Consanguinity in Haute-Provence
253
FIGURE 3
Juglar-Guerandy Marriage
These two genealogical reconstructions showing first-cousin alliances—one of
which is perfectly isonymic and the other heteronymic—demonstrate that marriages
among heteronymic spouses could, in fact, hide, or simply contain, some form of
close family tie. These very specific examples must not be allowed, however, to
define the reality of marriage practices in eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-
century Haute-Provence. Indeed, marriage among first cousins was exceptional even
after the establishment of the Napoleonic Code, which authorized civil marriages
between first cousins. Even second-cousin marriages were infrequent. Consanguinity
between peasants living in the same village, or in neighboring villages, was less
obvious and more diffuse, and resulted from the creation of subtle—often hidden—
links, reproduced generation after generation between households who exchanged
children and dowries according to the customary rituals of alliances. Double, paral-
lel, or crossmarriages stood out as the clearest examples of these practices. Many
others existed, and served to reinforce old chains of alliance and build up new ones.
Archives containing waivers granted during the ancien regime reveal in requests
from cousins four times removed (or requests from cousins for which the degrees
of relationship has been shifted from thrice to four times removed), the overlapping
of family links between spouses. Several alternatives are possible if one is to trace
them back to the common ancestor, thanks to “remarkable” marriages. The afore-
mentioned existence of double consanguinity—such as in the case of the Arnaud
marriage—was by contrast much more rare.
Family-name isonymy found in a province, region, village, or hamlet is not
directly linked to modes of alliance, which are also functional in heteronymic
households. The concentration of the same surname in a given area is not linked
to the marriage itself, but only to filiation, essentially through the male lineage.

254
THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY Vol. 5/No. 2/2000
NOTES
1
. This territory corresponds more or less to the present-day canton of Saint Andr e´ -
Les-Alpes, a district of Castellane in the d e´ partment of Alpes de Haute Provence (earlier
called Basses Alpes).
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