Le Febre, Guillaume
- Born: Abt 1682, Fleurbaix, Artois, France. (?)
 Events
• Name Change, 1 Nov2004. 1 Francesco Uys Rootenberg writes :Le Fevre does indeed mean "Smith" in French and appears in many spelling variants across France up to this day. As Richard Ball notes it appears in various forms for the same individual at the Cape too. The spelling variants are thus of no significance in chasing origins or distinguishing different families from each other. Examples of the freedom with which French names were (mis-)spelled and changed in Dutch colonial society are legion. One such example is that of Guillaume le Lievre and his wife Marie-Catherine Durier, who were listed as "Guijliaem de Lieuvre" and "Marie du Rieux" by the VOC when they embarked for the Cape in 1699.Guillaume le Lievre later became known as Willem de Haas!
He adds :-
I can't fill in any of your gaps, but observe that there is no French word FEBRE or FEVRE that I can find. FEVRIERE means February, and FEBRILE means (as in English) feverish, and while someone has connected the name to DE HAAS, the French for a hare (or HAAS) is LIÈVRE, so I hae me doots. (And if such a person had come from Lille, why not "van Rijssel" rather than "van Lille", seeing that Lille was at that time in the Netherlands?) I thought the name le Feuvre meant "Smith".
• Alt Birth. 2 Delia Robertson in her e-mail dated 5 May 2007 supports his birth before 1683, but place in Fleurbaix or Lille, Artois or Flandre.
|