Surname, Presant
I would like to know the meaning of the surname " Presant". I think it was originally French ,possibly with an acute accent on the "e".
We have been told that it originally was a name from Alsace- Lorraine?
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My brother has done a great deal of research on our surname. His website is www.presant.com which you may be interested in reading.The following is some of which is has found out....
From the information in the London Huguenot Library the indications are that the name Presant is not Huguenot, but Walloon, that is French speaking rather than Flemish speaking from Flanders in what is now Belgium. The distinction is that the Walloons began to escape to England early in the 16th cent to get away from religious persecution by Catholic Spain, which then controlled what is now Holland and Belgium.
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In France you can meet a similar surname: the spelling is Présent and in central Italy another surname is Presenti. It could be possibly a helpful person, "disponible" in French.
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Presant is an English surname as you can see at tinyurl.com/hfdy9h5, for instance. I don't know the etymology.
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