You are reading a single comment by @kl and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
kl
It's more complicated than that. French surnames like Dujardin and Dupont aren't at all aristratic; they're emphatically plebeian in origin. Nobody with a surname like that can trace direct (and "legitimate") male line descent back to a Norman aristo. On the other hand, if the family surname survived a few centuries in Britain without being anglicised (rather than tracing back to a more recent arrival), the original immigrant family probably climbed a bit up the social ladder, before or after they arrived here. Demlin? French immigrants who stayed pleb. De Moleyns? Posh.