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French Canadian name changes

Official Name Changes in France - Beginning in 1474, anyone who wished to change his name was required to get permission from the King. These official name changes can be found indexed in: Jérôme, archiviste. Dictionnaire des changements de noms de 1803 à 1956 (Dictionary of changed names from 1803 to 1956). Paris: Librairie Française, 1974.

Most of the citizens of the 1600-1800 were illiterate and few could sign their names. Priests,seminarians, missionaries, monks & nuns were the most educated groups in the citizenry.

Under the French system of  administration of New France the clerics & notories, were charged with recording "vital statistics" they wrote the names as they knew them to be in France, or as they heard them, so were written phonetically.  One example is the descendants of Louis Houde some of thedifferent spellings found are: Houde, Houd, Ould, Hood, Houle, Hoole.   Though Louis Houde  also had a Dit Name Louis Noël Houde dit Derochers, Dit names were not misspellings.
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The Anglicization of names came as the English or Americans began to document or write the French names. Many of these documents can be seen wiht the Fur Trade records,  where in the same time period the Fur Companies records have one spelling, and the Church another. Sometimes families did change the name on their own to an english phonetical spelling of the french pronunciation of the name. Lefebvre to LeFever or to the english meaning or translation of the name. Boulanger to Baker, Leblanc to White, Charpentier to Carpenter, Proffesional Names were used both as surnames and dit names.

Some French last names include the word "de"= "of" or "le" = "the" du is a contraction for de and le meaning "of the". During the French Revolution, when being associated with the nobility was unfashionable and even risky, some people dropped the de from their name, or omitted the mention of their feudal titles, though not all names using de were from noble families.

Unlike many countries, French women do not legally change names when they marry. However, it is customary that they take their husband's name as a "usage name".