Why names like Jeanne d’Arc in original french become Joan of Arc in English?
In: Culture
Jeanne in French is spelled Joan using English spelling. As English is a germanic language a lot of spelling rules are different so even though they are pronounced very similar the word is spelled very different. Arc is a place name. Family surnames is a quite new invention to distinguish people and before this was a common practice they used some sort of description to help specify who you were talking about. For example the name of the father, the job title or a descriptive word for the person. In this case as Jeanne d’Arc was traveling far from her home she was known by her home town, Arc. The prefix d’ in French is used to mean from. So the English translation of d’Arc is “of Arc”.
Latest Answers