Leblanc

Leblanc is the plainest kind of French name: le blanc, the white, fixed on a man because his hair or his complexion was fair, or because he stood next to a darker neighbour who needed telling apart from him. Surname scholars file names of this kind as cognominal, the broadest class of all, the one that grew out of nicknames rather than out of a father's name, a trade or a village.

That is why the name is everywhere in French-speaking country and concentrated nowhere. Nobody had to hear of a Leblanc elsewhere to coin one at home; the observation was obvious and it was made independently in parish after parish. The result is a surname with no single founder, no seat and no coat of arms behind it. Two Leblanc families with no document between them are, as a rule, simply two families who each once had a fair-haired man, and any claim of common descent between them needs a document, not a shared spelling.

One branch of the name is the exception that proves the point, because it does have a founder, a place and a date, and its story is not French but Acadian.

Around 1650 a settler named Daniel LeBlanc was at Port-Royal, the French foothold on the Bay of Fundy that anchored the colony of Acadia. The line he founded became the most numerous family in the colony, and unlike the Leblancs of France, whose name was coined many times over by strangers to one another, these ones really were kin: a single documented ancestor, a single stretch of coast, and a family tree that genealogists can follow.

Pierre LeBlanc, whose dates run from about 1720 to 1799, is remembered as an Acadian pioneer and a co-founder of Pointe-de-l'Église. His life sits either side of the year that broke the colony.

In 1755 the British expelled the Acadians. Le Grand Derangement, the Great Upheaval, emptied the settlements of the Fundy shore and scattered their people down the American seaboard and, eventually, into Louisiana. The LeBlancs went with everyone else, and because they were the largest family in Acadia the name turned up wherever the deportation reached.

What happened next is the part worth carrying. A farming people with no state and no army behind them kept their language and their family names through a generation of movement, and then rebuilt in two separate countries at once. In Louisiana the exiles became the Cajuns, and Leblanc became one of the pillars of that culture. In the Maritimes the families who came back made Acadia again out of fishing villages and parishes. Longfellow's Evangeline made the exile famous in English and gave it a heroine; the LeBlancs had lived the plot.

The three spellings are not carelessness; they are geography. In France the name is written Leblanc or Le Blanc, with le the ordinary article-particle that also gives La, Du and De. What France does not do is put a capital in the middle of a word: medial capitals of the DeVilliers or LeBlanc type are never used there, so the shape of LeBlanc on a mailbox in New Brunswick or Louisiana is a fossil of the Atlantic crossing.

The name also travelled by translation. Clarence White, the American bluegrass and country guitarist who lived from 1944 to 1973, was born Clarence Joseph LeBlanc: the surname simply crossed into English and kept its meaning. In England it went compound instead, in Stanley le Blanc Smith, an oarsman who lived from 1849 to 1922, and in Maurice Le Blanc-Smith, a British flying ace of the First World War who lived from 1896 to 1986.

The Acadian recovery shows up in the public record as a steady file of LeBlancs holding local office and running local business. Ovide Le Blanc, 1801 to 1870, was a notary and politician. Olivier J. Leblanc, 1830 to 1919, sat as a politician and was explicitly of Acadian descent. Isidore LeBlanc, 1837 to 1919, was an Acadian politician who was also a ship owner and merchant. Abraham LeBlanc, 1840 to 1913, and Henry S. LeBlanc, 1865 to 1946, were both merchants who moved into political life, and Benjamin Amedee LeBlanc, 1879 to 1946, was a physician who did the same.

The working coast is there too. Evee LeBlanc, born in 1878 and dead in 1978, was a fishing captain. Agapit Leblanc, 1887 to 1926, was a fishery officer. These are not grand careers and they are the point: the name came back to the shore it was cleared off and made an ordinary living there.

The line runs up to the top of the Canadian state. Romeo LeBlanc, 1927 to 2009, served as Governor General of Canada. Francis LeBlanc sat in the House of Commons from 1988 to 1997. Guy LeBlanc was mayor of Trois-Rivieres from 1990 to 2001, and Louis Guy LeBlanc, 1921 to 1990, was a Liberal member of the Commons. An Acadian surname reached the vice-regal office of the country that carried out the deportation.

In Louisiana the name went into politics and commerce with the same appetite. Dudley J. LeBlanc, 1894 to 1971, was a Louisiana state senator and the developer of Hadacol. Fred S. LeBlanc, 1897 to 1969, was attorney general of Louisiana and mayor of Baton Rouge. Samuel A. LeBlanc I, 1886 to 1955, was a Louisiana politician and judge.

New Orleans holds the name in other rooms. Rita Benson LeBlanc, born 1977, served as vice chairman of the board of the New Orleans Saints. Nicole M. LeBlanc is head milliner at Fleur de Paris in the city. Carl LeBlanc, born 1955, is an American guitarist and banjo player.

The Cajun renaissance has its Leblancs in Canada as well as the United States: Mario LeBlanc, born 1977, is an Acadian musician who records under the name Fayo, and Lisa LeBlanc, born 1990, is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Suzie LeBlanc, born 1961, is a soprano and early-music specialist, and Jimmie LeBlanc, born 1977, a composer and guitarist.

Back in France the name behaves exactly as an independently coined nickname should, producing unconnected people in every field. Claude le Blanc, 1669 to 1728, was a royal official under the old monarchy. Jean-Bernard, the abbe Le Blanc, 1707 to 1787, was an art critic. Hubert Le Blanc, active in the 1740s, played the viol. Louis Cesar de La Baume Le Blanc, 1708 to 1780, was a French nobleman whose long name shows the particle system at full stretch.

Two Maurice Leblancs are never to be untangled by a casual reader: Maurice Leblanc, 1857 to 1923, an engineer and industrialist, and Maurice Leblanc, 1864 to 1941, a novelist. Nicolas Leblanc, 1742 to 1806, was a chemist and surgeon. Alfred LeBlanc, 1869 to 1921, was a French aviator. Jean-Marie Leblanc, born 1944, raced as a cyclist and then ran the Tour de France as its director.

One French Le Blanc is remembered for something that happened to her rather than anything she did: Marie-Angelique Memmie Le Blanc, 1712 to 1775, is recorded as a feral child.

Beyond France the byname was coined in its own right elsewhere again: Raymond Leblanc, 1915 to 2008, was a Belgian film director, Bart le Blanc, born 1946, is a Dutch economist, and Gyozo Leblanc, born 1947, is a Hungarian tenor, actor and director. None of them needs to be related to any of the others, and almost certainly is not.

The most widely recognised bearer alive is Matt LeBlanc, born 1967, the American actor who played Joey Tribbiani in Friends and then in Joey, and a version of himself in Episodes. Paul LeBlanc won an Academy Award for his hair and make-up work on Amadeus. Paul LeBlanc, a different man, is president of Southern New Hampshire University.

Sport carries it as well. Karina LeBlanc, born 1980, kept goal for Canada. Guillaume LeBlanc, born 1962, competed mainly at the 20 kilometre walk. Camille Leblanc-Bazinet, born 1988, is a CrossFit Games athlete, and Annie LeBlanc, born 1992, a middle-distance runner. Wade LeBlanc, born 1984, pitched in American baseball and Charles Leblanc, born 1996, plays it for Canada.

A reader who carries the name should hold two things at once. Most Leblancs in Europe descend from some fair-haired ancestor nobody recorded, and owe nothing to any other family of the name. The LeBlancs of Acadia, Louisiana and the Maritimes descend from one man at Port-Royal, and their surname carries 1755 with it.