Due to inconsistent record keeping and different contemporary customs, thename ofJoan of Arc at birth is not known for certain.
Joan of Arc did not hail from a place calledArc, contrary topopular belief,[1][2] but was born and raised in the village ofDomrémy in what was then the northeastern frontier of theKingdom of France.[3] In theEnglish language her first name has been repeated asJoan since the fifteenth century because that was the only English equivalent for the feminine form ofJohn during her lifetime. Her surviving signatures are all spelled in themiddle French formJehanne without surname. Inmodern French, her name is always rendered asJeanne d'Arc, reflecting spelling changes due to the evolution of the language over time. Her given name at birth is also sometimes written as "Jeanneton"[4][5] or "Jeannette", with Joan of Arc possibly having removed the diminutive suffix-eton or-ette in her teenage years.[6]
The surnameof Arc is a translation ofd'Arc, which itself is a nineteenth-century French approximation ofher father's name. Apostrophes were never used in fifteenth-century French surnames, which sometimes leads to confusion between place names and other names that begin with the letterD. Based on Latin records, which do reflect a difference, her father's name was more likelyDarc.[4][5] Spelling was also phonetic and original records produce his surname in at least nine different forms, such asDars,Day,Darx, Dare, Tarc, Tart orDart.[7][8]
To further complicate matters, surnames were not universal in the fifteenth century and surname inheritance did not necessarily follow modern patterns. Joan of Arc testified at her trial that she didn't know anything about her surname. No surviving record from Joan's lifetime shows that she used either her mother's or her father's surname, but she often referred to herself asla Pucelle, which roughly translates asthe Maiden. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, whenJeanne d'Arc andJoan of Arc became standard, literature and artistic works that refer to her often describe her asla Pucelle orthe Maid of Orléans. Her native village has been renamedDomrémy-la-Pucelle in reflection of that tradition.[8]
Joan appears, in a negative light, inWilliam Shakespeare's late sixteenth-century playHenry VI, Part 1. In the play she is referred to mainly asJoan La Pucelle andJoan, but also twice asJoan of Arc.
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Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling, is–that Jean Hordal, a descendant of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name Darc, in 1612. But what of that? Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic blockhead, it is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by printers: in France, much more so.
—Thomas De Quincey,Joan of Arc[9]
In the bull ofher canonization,Divina Disponente of 16 May 1920,Pope Benedict XV consistently gave her name inLatin as "Ioanna de Arc", "Ioanna" being the feminine nominative singular form ofIoannes.[10] Although it has been given elsewhere as "Ioanna Arcensis", "Arcensis" being in the nominative case and denoting "of Arc",Roman Catholicsaints denominatedtoponymically inLatin generally are denominated "de" (which takes the ablative case) followed by the toponym, though, in post-classical Latin usage, "de" was used patronymically on occasion as well. In any case, in translating foreign names that did not have commonly recognized Latin equivalents, the oblique forms of the native names were also used on occasion. Due to the ambiguous meaning of the surname, theLatin "de Arc" is likely not a truetoponym, but rather the Latinization of "d'Arc", despite the absence of apostrophes in French surnames during the life of St. Joan.