Hello everyone. This is the continuation of the story of my French family.

The story starts here
Previous episode: Part 10

My Grandfathers' Wikipedia Articles

Two days ago, while researching the story of my family for this series of Steemit posts, I discovered that there were articles in Wikipedia for both my grandfathers. This is something that I did not know before.

The biggest surprise was that Henri's Wikipedia article was not in the French Wikipedia, but in the Breton one!

The Breton language is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany, mostly related to Cornish and Welsh. It is estimated that around 200,000 inhabitants of Brittany are able to speak Breton. And while in the 1950s there were people in Brittany that were speaking only Breton, and were not able to speak French, this is no longer the case nowadays.

Here is the first line in Henri's article in Breton:

Henri Dyèvre a oa un ofisour uhel eus Morlu Frañs, ijinour hidrografour jeneral a gentañ klas (eilamiral), dastumer lec'hanvioù brezhonek.

Translated in English:
Henri Dyèvre was an officer in the French Navy, first class hydrographic engineer (admiral), and a collector of Breton place names.

Indeed, I had someway forgotten one of Henri's hobbies: the Breton toponymy. Toponymy is the study of place names. Henri was mostly interested in the Breton names of places on the Brittany coast.
So, the reason there is an article about Henri in the Breton Wikipedia is his interest in the Breton names of places.

My paternal grandfather Léonce Celier has a rather long article in the French Wikipedia.

I never had meaningful conversations with Léonce, who dies when I was 14 years old. So, this Wikipedia article will be a great help for the next entries in this series that will be about Léonce.

Continue to Part 12

---

If you like this story, please consider to follow me @vcelier

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8
Part 9 - Part 10
.