1707: Joan of Arc pt. 1 Aug 17, 2019
In European societies, it was typical for the titles of nobility to include place-names, but with "Joan of Arc" or "Jeanne d'Arc", this was not the case. She was not born in Arc but Domrémy. Moreover she was a peasant and this was her father's name, so it definitely wasn't for nobility. It is believed instead that this comes from a misinterpretation of 'Darc' or 'Dars' or something like this. French elides its vowels so 'de' before places with vowels it is now written d', but the apostrophe was not always part of French spelling.Since the apostrophe would not be used until later in French, and because surnames were not universal then, it was miscorrected after her death. There will be more on her name tomorrow.
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