Coignard
Today marks four years since I registered the domain for my weblog, renecoignard.com. I’d never kept count of how long I’d been using it, but recently I noticed quite by chance that its birthday was coming up. Well then, I thought, this is a good opportunity to share something interesting related to it. Say, the history of the surname I once chose for myself in place of the one I inherited from my father and had certified by the state. You probably already know my relationship with any state apparatus has always been rather tense, to put it mildly. But that’s not what this is about. Before I begin, here’s a funny random fact: I chose this last name before I chose my first names (I mean René Jean-Michel Yves).
When I asked my former French girlfriend what her surname meant, she simply replied: “it just exists; I think many French surnames don’t really have any meaning behind them”. Of course, I’m not quoting her verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Well, I didn’t agree with her observation then, and I certainly don’t now: French surnames often have complex but interesting histories connected to their meanings. Take my own surname, Coignard; I’ve been researching it since 2022, and the investigation itself has proved quite an interesting historical adventure for me. In this note, I’d like to briefly summarise my research findings and tell the story of the main theories I’ve identified.
I’ll begin with the French occupational version, which I’ve chosen as the primary one. The second, Breton version has its own appeal, and I’ll discuss it shortly, but there are more arguments in favour of the first. Why occupational? Because I started by studying the suffix -ard, which primarily functions as an occupational marker (though it also appears as an intensifier and a pejorative marker). The first part of the word presumably derives from the French cognée (axe), and in combination with the suffix -ard explains the occupational function of the bearer: one who uses an axe, that is, a woodcutter. There’s another formula where instead of the axe, cogner is used, meaning to hit or strike: in that case, -ard most likely functions as a pejorative marker, and the meaning becomes “one who fights”, “brawler”, “ruffian”. The pejorative functions of the suffix -ard were studied by Kurt Glaser. This is further supported by the Occitan parallel, which has the word conhar, also meaning to hit or strike, pronounced roughly as “koo-nya”.
The French linguist Albert Dauzat studied surnames beginning with Cogn- and established that their bearers were predominantly located in forested regions. Given this context, the first version, the occupational one, seems more appropriate in this particular case. Additionally, bearers of the surname Coignard itself, and similar ones, historically came predominantly from Maxent near Plélan-le-Grand: according to research by General Tuffet, between 1590 and 1730, at least 504 people with the surnames Cognard and Coignard were born there. The occupations of surname bearers were directly or indirectly connected with woodworking: woodcutters, millers, sabot-makers. Taking into account the areal analysis (surname bearers live in forested regions) and the occupational marker (surname bearers engage in professions connected with working with wood), I consider the French occupational version to be the most plausible. In the process, I also discovered a funny French saying: “Il ne faut pas jeter le manche après la cognée”, which literally means “one mustn’t throw the handle after the axe”. The idea is that one shouldn’t abandon what one’s started after the first setback: one must gather one’s courage and carry on.
The Breton version also begins with studying -ard, and I was greatly helped in this by J.-L. Fleuriot’s work “Quelques noms de lieux ou de personnes en vieux-breton”, in which he shows that -ard/-arth is a root derived from Old Breton meaning “bear”, often used in the sense of “warrior”, “high”, or “noble” in compound personal names. The same document discusses Count Alain Canhiart (circa 1000-1058), Count of Cornouaille, who founded the Benedictine monastery of Locmaria de Quimper for his daughter Hodiern, its first abbess. Fleuriot analyzes the Count’s surname, which appears in 11th-century documents in various forms: Cainard (1031-1055, 1037) and Chanarth (other sources). Notably, in a 1029 document, Chanarth was translated into Latin as “Bellator fortis” (brave warrior). Fleuriot proposes the etymology cain (beautiful) + arth (bear, in the sense of “strong”, “warlike”). An alternative reconstruction as Old Breton Kann Yac’h, meaning “a fighter full of vigour”, has been suggested by other researchers, though both etymologies converge on the same Latin translation and semantic field. In later French usage, related surnames appear in various spellings: Congnard, Cognard, and Coignard.
Against the Breton version is the fact that Maxent, which I already mentioned in the first version of the surname’s origin, is located in Haute Bretagne, a Romance-speaking zone, and Breton had not been the primary language there since the 10th century. So the French occupational version remains the primary one. Of course, it isn’t critical for me: since I didn’t inherit this surname but chose it for myself independently, I can enjoy the advantages of both versions I’ve studied. I like them both equally, though the Breton one seems more elegant than the French occupational version.
Of course, it’s impossible to fit all the details of the research into such a short note, and the research isn’t fully complete: besides these two main versions, there are also Burgundian, Belgian, Limousin, Léonard, Cotentin, Breton Armor, and other variants, but I haven’t gathered as many arguments in their favour. So yes, the research continues. Instead of a conclusion, I’ll merely note another funny fact: I arrived at the first and still primary version, the French occupational one, in 2022 at a moment when I was hiding in the forest from police persecution. And yes, I was splitting wood with an axe for my own stove and for the stove of an old woman who lived in the same village where I was hiding, so that she wouldn’t freeze during that winter’s harsh frosts (it was cold: two thermometers recorded –38°C and –40°C on one particular day). She didn’t freeze, and neither did I.
https://renecoignard.com/coignard/
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