This article presents a contrastive analysis of the most frequent surnames in metropolitan France and Quebec in order to identify their main patterns of formation and compare their distribution. The corpus comprises the 35 most frequent surnames in metropolitan France, according to data from the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), as well as the 35 most frequent surnames in Quebec, based on the ranking of the 1,000 most common surnames compiled by the Institut de la statistique du Québec. The study adopts both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The origins and variants of the surnames are established on the basis of Dauzat’s Les noms de personnes : origine et évolution. Prénoms. Noms de famille. Surnoms. Pseudonymes (1925) and Picard’s Dictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français (2019). The surnames are then classified according to Dauzat’s typology, which distinguishes patronymic, toponymic, occupational, and descriptive categories. A fifth category, that of surnames of mixed origin, was introduced in this study to group together surnames that may derive from two different patterns of formation. The analysis highlights the predominance of patronymic surnames in both corpora, as well as the importance of surnames of mixed origin. The distribution nevertheless appears more balanced in Quebec, where occupational, toponymic, and descriptive surnames are proportionally more numerous than in metropolitan France.
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