Any French speakers about?

[BeyondApproach]

My French is quite rusty and google translate has translated it but it just doesn't make sense (or maybe my English is no better than my French 😁)

Can someone translate this for me?

La graphie "Surname1 Surname2" est réservée par tradition familiale au porteur du titre de duc Surname2, soit une personne par génération, toutes branches généalogiques confondues, ainsi qu'à son épouse, la duchesse Surname2.

Yes, please PM me! I'd love to know.

PM sent. Link looks complicated as I tried the fancy 'copy link to highlight' lol. Let me know if it works.

We also had an English Earl or something working at that company (how they let me in the door only God knows!).

Her English was impeccable with only the slightest hint of a French accent. Her French was obviously also excellent lol. I think that might have been how the conversation came up. I probably asked whether she had gone to school here or something.

Bumping for any early risers!

best answer

It is just a generic statement about hereditary titles.

It simply means that for each generation only one person and his partner will hold a specific title, in this case duke until the person dies and the title passes on to their heir.

The surname 1 and 2 are just options. Most French dukes don't have names that are double-barrelled (although some are) instead they will be ''De something'' as in ''Duc de Polignac''.

Hope that helps.

My question is more whether she was French nobility?

No. I have made the post anonymous by not writing the surnames out. They are real surnames.

France is a republic so… no.
She might have come from a family that was in the past though.

Sorry what I mean is:

If you think about royalty in the UK - it used to be that males inherited the title in preference to females i.e. first son rather than first child, but that females could inherit the title if there wasn't a male - i.e. the queen.

However, in British nobility you can only inherit (for example) a dukedom by being male - if you only have daughters the title goes to a male cousin or brother or becomes extinct.

(Not a dukedom but think about the entailment of Longbourn (sp?) in Pride and Prejudice).

So if the French aristocratic arrangements were like our royal arrangements rather than our nobility arrangements (which are entailed on only males) she could have inherited the title and hence the surname.

Got ya! Clearly I am hard of thinking lol.

Reverso is a better translation app than google.

What's the translation from Reverso?