VENABLES FAMILIES

The name of Venables   is mentioned for the first time in a charter written for a Dnomination to the abbey of Saint-Ouen by Roger de Clères of his lands of Blainville, Crevon, Saint-Arnoult and Saint-Aignan, with the churches and the tithes. Is a witness among many local characters: Malgerius de Venablis (Mauger deVenables)1. 

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L'etymologies de Venables   is close to "Venabulum". Name used in the 1st century AD by Cicero to designate a hunting spear (kind of half-spike, whose iron was very wide). The poet Virgil writes: lato venabula ferro; it was used to hunt wild animals (the word venabula est  used in the plural)2.

 

Why did an illustrious Roman give the name Venabulum to a spear? It is by going back to the 2nd century BC that we can understand  the symbolic origin due to the establishment of the tribe of Aulerci-Eburovices on the soil of the current department of Eure.3 

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Aulerci: "Those who are far from their tracks". This term expresses the idea of separation or estrangement.

Eburo: Two meanings are given designating  the wild boar and  the yew

Vice: The term has been brought closer to the Latin vincere (vincō, vīcī) to overcome, to fight.4

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1 Marie FAUROUX:  Collection of acts of the Dukes of Normandy from 911 to 1066, Memoirs of the Society of Antiquaries of Normandy, t. 36(1961), Pg    373-374, no. 191

2 Felix Gaffiot:Latin-French Illustrated Dictionary, Hachette

  Harry Thurston Peck: Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers

   William Smith:dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. GE Marindin

3Auguste Le Prevost: memory and historical and archaeological notice of the department of Eure

4Xavier Delamarré:Dictionary of the Gallic language 

   Jacques Lacroix:Names of Gallic origin - the sapling of battles.

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