Origin of FOY name (was Re: ROSE MERCEDES FOY-WILKES BARRE PA)
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In reply to:
Re: ROSE MERCEDES FOY-WILKES BARRE PA
9/23/98
Hello everyone. Perhaps I can help.
The name FOY arose independently in Irland and France.
It arose first in France, in the late Middle Ages when people were first taking family names. Like many French names, it's the name of a saint -- Ste-Foy, the same one the Spanish call Santa Fe, the same as Saint Sofia. The Church makes no claim that she ever was a real person. She is a "legendary" saint, maintined in the Calendar of Saints out of respect for the devotion and faith of the people who prayed to her. Her name in the early Romance languages (and in modern French) means "Faith." The legend is that St. Faith had two daughters, Hope and Charity, who were gruesomly martyred by the Romans, and that St. Faith then died of grief at their graves. Most early French ancestors of ours used the later form of the name, DeFoye, indicating a connection to the noble house of that name (in Picardy, apparently).With the expulsion of the Huguenots (French Protestants) in the religious upheavals of the Reformation, Foys were among the dispersed. Centred primarily around the Brittany port of La Rochelle, they fled into the Netherlands and Germany, or to Britain. One family of mariners went to early Boston (ca 1552) and were well-known in the colony. The refugees in Holland adapted the spelling of the name to DeFuij. By the early 1700's people everywhere were dropping the "de" parts of their names, so they became "Fuij." On immigration records you often see the name spelled "Feÿ" or "Foÿ", the dotted "y" being the same thing as "ij." The name is uncommon in Belgium and Holland, very uncommon in Germany, and relatively common in France. A Dutchman named Benjamin Fooy (Fuij) immigrated to Spanish West Florida around 1780 and was instrumental in the founding of Memphis. His grandparents were probably French.
The Irish name arose in Cromwellian times when the Irish were required to take an English form of their Gaelic names. The Gaelic is something like "O'Faigh." It was anglicized in several ways, the truest being "Fahey," but also as Fee, Fey, Fay, and Foy.
Scottish Foys are descended either from British or Northern Irish ancestors. Today the name is common in Roscommon, north of Dublin, and in County Mayo.