Le Carénage/L'Orient

[cassidain]

Carénage est un quartier de Saint-Barthélemy dans les Caraïbes. Il est situé dans la partie centre-ouest de l'île entre Saint-Jean, Lurin et Morne Criquet. C'est l'un des plus petits quartiers de l'île. Par ailleurs, Le Carénage est l'ancien nom du bourg de Gustavia avant 1787[1].

I've noticed some forum folk are wont to refer to Lorient (modern spelling) as L'Orient (historical spelling). Not sure why, but perhaps those might want to refer to Gustavia by its name from the same époque ? Le Carénage - the place where boats'/ships' bottoms are repaired, repainted, resealed with oakum, etc.

Modern day Carénage is a district #20 on this map:

 

[cec1]

Carénage est un quartier de Saint-Barthélemy dans les Caraïbes. Il est situé dans la partie centre-ouest de l'île entre Saint-Jean, Lurin et Morne Criquet. C'est l'un des plus petits quartiers de l'île. Par ailleurs, Le Carénage est l'ancien nom du bourg de Gustavia avant 1787[1].

I've noticed some forum folk are wont to refer to Lorient (modern spelling) as L'Orient (historical spelling). Not sure why, but perhaps those might want to refer to Gustavia by its name from the same époque ? Le Carénage - the place where boats'/ships' bottoms are repaired, repainted, resealed with oakum, etc.

Modern day Carénage is a district #20 on this map:
View attachment 72760

Very interesting factoid, Cass! Re: Lorient vs L’Orient, the latter was the spelling in my early years of visiting SBH — I don’t know when (or why) the apostrophe was dropped, but I finally stopped using it after being repeatedly corrected on my “misspelling.”

 

[cassidain]

As the founders of Lorient village were Bretons, one might guess the village name was borrowed from Lorient in Brittany ??? The first church was built in 1724, as an idea of when the colonists may have first arrived . . .

Here's from the wiki about the toponymy of Lorient in Brittany:

Le nom de la ville est attesté sous la forme Lorient en 1670.

Il proviendrait de celui du Soleil d'Orient, premier navire construit dans les chantiers de la Compagnie française des Indes orientales dont la construction a débuté en février 1667 et qui est lancé en en 1671. Les ouvriers auraient donné au chantier le nom du navire qui, par contraction, est devenu rapidement « L'Orient ». Le lieu conservera ce nom qui deviendra Lorient. Les employés de la compagnie s'approprièrent l'endroit en lui donnant un nom, inspiré par la compagnie elle-même, dont le nom communément utilisé était la « compagnie d'Orient ». Un acte de naissance d'août 1667 inscrit à la paroisse de Ploemeur indique que les parents travaillent à « Loriental ». Rapidement, le chantier qui naissait fut appelé « lieu d'Orient ».

 

[JEK]

Very interesting factoid, Cass! Re: Lorient vs L’Orient, the latter was the spelling in my early years of visiting SBH — I don’t know when (or why) the apostrophe was dropped, but I finally stopped using it after being repeatedly corrected on my “misspelling.”

Henry Porter's "newspaper" always referred to Lorient.

 

[davesmom]

This part also interests me: "1667 inscrit à la paroisse de Ploemeur" as you have probably heard of a little town in Brittany: Ploërmel is a commune in the Morbihan department in Brittany, in north-western France. (I actually lived kind of near that town for a little bit back in the day..)

Wondering if Ploemeur is a corruption of Ploërmel? Some of us have nothing better to do than wonder about stuff like that..Notice that the tréma did not make it over the ocean on the e...and the ' was not kept in L'Orient.. oh yeah, and often the "l" in the environment of a vowel over time "vowelized" (vocalized) to "u"...just sayin', it coulda' happened..

 

[cassidain]

Toponymy tends to be a very democratic thing . . . highly responsive to the usage of the population.
Perhaps if enough forum folk insist on L’Orient the COM will officially change the orthography