Woods wrote:Hamon, Fillon, Mélenchon... Ça veut dire quoi le -on dans le nom de certains Français ?
It depends on the name. In some cases, this is a survival of the Latin suffix -
ōnem used to form cognomina and nicknames (e.g.
Cicerō). In French, the suffix acquired diminutive force.
Fillon, for instance, is a diminutive of
fils.
But Mélenchon isn't originally French. The name originated in Murcia (there's a town called Los Melenchones near the Murcian seaport of Águilas) and may be a derivation of
Melendo, a hypocoristic form of
Hermenegildo.
Hamon is another hypocoristic, this one of Germanic origin, consisting of a suffix
-on (cognate to the Latin one discussed above) attached to the first element of any one of a number of Frankish names beginning in
Haim- (
Haimrich,
Heimrad,
Heimbert, etc.).
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons