-eaux

French language noun plural form suffix June 2023 June 2023 thumb|upright=1.2|Louisiana Creole restaurant food truck in California using the "geaux" spelling as a partial replacement of "to go." eaux is the standard French language plural form of nouns ending in eau, e.g. fr eau → fr eaux, fr château → fr châteaux, fr gâteau → fr gâteaux. In the United States, it often occurs as the ending of Cajun surnames, as well as a replacement for the long "O" (oʊ) sound in some English words as a marker of Cajun, or more broadly Louisiana, identity.Dajko Nathalie Language Variety in the New South: Contemporary Perspectives on Change and Variation 2018 University of North Carolina Press 978-1-4696-3881-2 Chapel Hill, North Carolina 156–157 The Continuing Symbolic Importance of French in Louisiana 1029104648 https://books.google.com/books?id=l29RDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA156 French Louisiana surnames Compared to spelling conventions elsewhere in the French-speaking world, eaux is an extremely common ending for Cajun and Creole surnames that end in the long "O" sound (o), e.g., Arceneaux, Babineaux, Boudreaux, Breaux, Comeaux, Desormeaux, Marceaux, Meaux, Primeaux, Robicheaux, Simoneaux, Thibodeaux, etc. While the same surnames in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada are generally spelled without a terminal x,Boudreau Jacinthe Boudreau One-Name Study https://one-name.org/name_profile/boudreau/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240506140407/https://one-name.org/name_profile/boudreau/ 6 May 2024 2023-06-02 Guild of One-Name Studies only relatively few Louisiana surnames make use of alternate representations of this sound, such as Billeaud, Guilbeau, Rougeau, Soileau, and Thériot, with many of these latter names indeed spelled with a final eaux by some families. Although there is debate about the exact emergence of the eaux spelling in Louisiana, it has been claimed that the spelling originated in the 18th and 19th centuries when French Louisianians, for the most part illiterate and supposedly unable to sign their own name, often resorted to making an X mark at the end of their printed name in order to sign legal documents. Because many Cajun and Creole surnames of French origin already ended in eau, these names' endings eventually became standardized as eaux.Speaker takes mystery out of Cajun x-factor Cajun surnames http://www.acadian-cajun.com/cmanew5e.html dead American Press Chris Segura 1999-08-05 2006-11-08 https://web.archive.org/web/20061206223903/http://www.acadian-cajun.com/cmanew5e.html 2006-12-06 This claim has been disputed by the historian Carl Brasseaux, who insists that the eaux ending was one of many possible ways to standardize Louisiana surnames ending in an o sound. Brasseaux credits St. Martin Parish Judge Pierre Paul Briant for standardizing the eaux spelling of these names during his oversight of the 1820 U.S. Census. In addition, the counts of Pontchartrain and Maurepas spelled their surname "Phélypeaux," among others, indicating a precedence for the x spelling in at least some parts of France.Rule John C. 1965 Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain et Maurepas: Reflections on His Life and His Papers 4230863 Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 6 4 365–377 0024-6816 English-language use in Louisiana United States spelling and use thumb|A Louisiana campaign rally sign encouraging people to "geaux vote." The use of eaux as a replacement for oʊ in English-language contexts can be considered a salient feature of English usage in Louisiana.Kang Sang-Gu 2021-12-31 Symbolic Use of Language as a Means to Demonstrate Accommodation https://kiss.kstudy.com/Detail/Ar?key=3923718 Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 25 2 45–58 10.25256/PAAL.25.2.3 245777184 subscription It is used in Louisiana as a marker of Cajun (or more broadly Louisiana) heritage, particularly at collegiate and professional sporting events, typified as "Geaux Tigers", "Geaux Cajuns", or "Geaux Saints" being pronounced as "Go Tigers", "Go Cajuns", and "Go Saints". Louisiana State University trademarked the phrase "Geaux Tigers" in 2005,Branch Chris Postcard From L.S.U.: Geaux? Just Go With It https://archive.nytimes.com/thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/postcard-from-l-s-u-geaux-just-go-with-it/?mcubz=2 2023-06-02 The New York Times 2011-11-01 and University of Louisiana at Lafayette similarly trademarked "Geaux Cajuns" in 2014. 2014-05-29 'Geaux Cajuns' earns federal trademark registration https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/acadiana/2014/05/29/geaux-cajuns-earns-federal-trademark-registration/9728977/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240506141227/https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/acadiana/2014/05/29/geaux-cajuns-earns-federal-trademark-registration/9728977/ 6 May 2024 2023-06-04 The Daily Advertiser Lafayette, Louisiana There was also a racehorse named Geaux Rocket Ride. However, in the French language, a letter "e" or "i" that immediately follows a "g" will cause the "g" to become soft. Therefore, the pronunciation of "geaux" is actually ʒ o, and not g oʊ. Preserving the hard g-sound would either require removing the "e" (resulting in gaux) or inserting a silent "u" after "g" (gueaux). References External links -eaux -eau -x Perschall Matthew 2023-03-30 Photo Essay: Excessive 'eaux'? en Reveille https://www.lsureveille.com/multimedia/photos-excessive-eaux/article_ac9faca6-ce7a-11ed-afa9-4fb3e0f6dac4.html 2023-06-04 The Rice University Neologisms Database (see: Geaux) http://neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=1874 Who Are the Cajuns? http://www.gumbo2go.com/Cajun.html Gumbo2go 2006-11-08 https://web.archive.org/web/20060617214042/http://gumbo2go.com/Cajun.html 2006-06-17 dead Eaux Eaux Eaux