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I see these abbreviations a lot and still cannot find the answer for these words set in location descriptions:

  • auj.

  • ev.

  • ar.

St-Etienne De Mortagne (Auj. Mortagne-Sur-Gironde), Ev. Saintes, Saintonge (Ar. Saintes, Charente-Maritime)

st-pierre, frontenay-l'abbatu, ev. saintes, saintonge (auj. frontenay-rohan-rohan, ar. niort, deux-sevres)

"Notre-Dame, Nachamps, ev. Saintes, Saintonge (ar. St-Jean-d’Angely, Charente-Maritime)"

I have the paragraph here, but for months, I have been trying to figure out addresses and locations written in French, Quebec French

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Living in Lachine, jean Mouflet, his wife Anne Dodain and two of their children Marguerite and Angélique Gabrielle seemed to have vanished on the day after the 5th of August 1689 (source: MSGCF 50 (3) . we surmise that they were killed or captured during the Lachine Massacre.

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Auj. is short for "Aujourd'hui". It means the town changed its name since he was born.

Birth : Circa 1645 in St-Etienne De Mortagne, now Mortagne-Sur-Gironde

Ar. is short for "Arrondissement", Saintes is an arrondissement of the Charentes-Maritimes department.

I'm not exactly sure what ev. means, but it's probably short for the region name before arrondissement were adopted in 1800.

So the current location is:

Mortagne-Sur-Gironde, Arrondissement Saintes, Charente-Maritime

However it's not a full adress, it's just the city. It's kind of like saying "Houston, Texas", the last part indicating the region, except it's not very useful because in France there are (almost) no two cities with the same name where you'd need to add the region to be unambiguous.

Hope that helps!

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  • I also got this. But the first answer helps the most, for sure. auj. Aujourd'hui (today or nowadays depending on the sentence)
    – Vogued
    Commented Mar 1, 2019 at 17:45
  • ev. Évêché refers to the administrative level in catholic system, Évêché will take care of many parishes
    – Vogued
    Commented Mar 1, 2019 at 17:45
  • ar. Arrondissement : means borough
    – Vogued
    Commented Mar 1, 2019 at 17:45
  • When they say, "Charente-Maritime" it refers to it as "the department." Even in Wiki is says the department of.. When I think of a department, I think of people, government, a business department. I think they are referring to a small region. Is this a physical region like a township? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charente-Maritime
    – Vogued
    Commented Mar 1, 2019 at 17:51
  • 4
    @Vogued "Département" is a territorial subdivision, like the US have state and counties, France has Régions, Départements, Arrondissements, and Cantons. It's not really the same meaning as "department" in English.
    – Teleporting Goat
    Commented Mar 1, 2019 at 17:56

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