Boisvert
A French surname meaning 'green wood' or 'fresh wood,' originally a descriptive or locational name.
The #6,958 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 64,042 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Boisvert comes from French bois, meaning 'wood' or 'forest,' and vert, meaning 'green.' The name likely began as a topographic or descriptive surname for someone living by a green wood, a wooded place, or land distinguished by its fresh vegetation. In older surname practice, such names could also be attached to a house, estate, or local feature rather than to a personal trait.
History
The name is French in form and is especially familiar in French-speaking North America. An early 20th-century source notes that some French refugees and immigrants sometimes translated names like Boisvert into English equivalents such as Greenwood, which helps explain occasional parallel surnames. In modern usage it remains most closely associated with Quebec and other Francophone communities.
Origin
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Fun fact
The name is one of those transparent French surnames that can be translated quite literally into English as 'Greenwood.'
From the historical record
“wood and Highstreet, come into the lists is puzzling, and we can only suppose that the immigrants translated their French names into the corresponding English, as Boisvert into Greenwood, and Hauterue into Highstreet. A large number of names of the refugees still remain among us, recognizable ; nevertheless, a…”
— Family Names and their Story