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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • French : topographic name for someone who lived on a piece of land overgrown with bushes or scrub, Old French barthe (a word probably of Gaulish origin).
  • German : metonymic occupational name for someone who made (battle)axes, from Middle High German barte, Middle Low German barde ‘axe’.
  • A Barthe or Barte from the Languedoc region of France is recorded in Varennes, Quebec, in 1707, together with the secondary surnames Belleville and Larivière.

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