The Original Bellefeuille Two-Part Surname: Poiriau - Bellefeuille

The original Bellefeuille surname was a two-part name, as were most of the surnames of immigrants from France to Canada prior to 1745.

The full name of all Bellefeuille ancestors prior to the late-19th century was Poiriau - Bellefeuille.
Because few people could read and write, and therefore did not know the nuances of the spelling of the names they wrote down, there are many variations in the spelling of Bellefeuille and Poiriot found in documents such marriage, birth and death records.

The main variations of the Poiriau surname, which are found frequently, are:

Poiriot, Poirieau, Poiriaux, Poiriault, Poirieault.

The most common and earliest form was Poiriau and Poiriot. Both are used often to mean the same person.

However, variations in the name of Bellefeuille are rare and usually are only found when the name was anglicized because the ancestor immigrated to the US from Canada.

The primary variations of the Bellefeuille name include:

Belfeuille, Belfeuil.

At the end of the 19th century, French Canadians decided to drop one of their surnames. Most dropped the second one because they'd always been known by their first surname. But a few decided they wanted to keep the second surname.

In the Bellefeuille family, I have not found anyone who kept the first name Poiriau or one of its variations. All seem to have chosen the Bellefeuille name.

The choice of the second surname is extremely unusual, and was only usually taken when the French people preferred the meaning of the second over the first.

The hyphen in the surname was written and pronounced as "dit" in French, which sounds like "dee" in English. Thus, the name Poiriau-Bellefeuille was actually spoken as "Poiriau dit Bellefeuille".

However, to identify that they chose the second surname instead of the first, some Bellefeuille families in the late 19th century, like my grandmother, prefixed their name with the letters "de" which in French means "of" but which was a near-homonym of "dit" at the time.

Thus, there are Bellefeuille descendents who go by the name of "De Bellefeuille" and "Debellefeuille".

By the late 19th century, there no longer were any Poiriau-Bellefeuille. All were now surnamed Bellefeuille, unless they moved to the US and anglicized the name Bellefeuille to make it easier for Americans to write it.

The name Poiriau, Poiriot, and their variations, in less than a quarter of a century, disappeared from all records including census records, and was replaced with either Bellefeuille, or more rarely Debellefeuille.