Usage in spelling names was very irregular in the seventeenth century.
People spelled a name (or a word) just as it came into their minds to
do so, without fixed rules or custom. Thus the spelling of the name of
the discoverer of the Mississippi was varied--all the following forms
being used: Joliet, Jolliet, Jolyet, Jollyet. Sometimes all forms were
employed in the same document. Marquette in writing an account of his
explorations speaks of his companion as “Jolyet,” “Jollyet,” and
“Jolliet” indifferently.[64]
Under such circumstances it remains to be decided what the present
usage is, and on what facts it is based. Many, indeed most English
writers, follow Parkman, the greatest of our historians who have
written on this subject, and use the form with one “l”--“Joliet.” This
has become a part of geographical usage, and we have, for instance,
Joliet, Illinois and Indiana, and Mount Joliet. And Dr. R. G.
Thwaites, in his _Jesuit Relations_,[65] uses the one “l” in his
spelling of the name. Later, however, Doctor Thwaites became convinced
that the double “l” was the better form and often so remarked to his
assistants.
The change from “Joliet” to “Jolliet” is based first on the constant
custom of French writers, both in the Old World and the New. Pierre
Margry, the great French archivist, the most learned man of his time
concerning New France documents, always speaks of Jolliet. Félix
Martin of the Jesuit order, who wrote in 1861, uses Jolliet. Father
Tailhan, the learned editor of Perrot’s _Memoire_, uses Jolliet. The
same is true of John G. Shea, Henri Harrisse, Abbé Ferland, and
Jolliet’s latest biographer, Ernest Gagnon, who in 1902 published a
life of Jolliet derived from many newly discovered and hitherto
unpublished manuscripts. All these authors were familiar with the
seventeenth-century documents in the original form. They decided that
“Jolliet” was used more often and more consistently than any other
form, though all of them would admit that in many documents the
spelling “Joliet” may be found. For example, the baptismal
register[66] spells the name by which Jolliet was christened,
“Joliet.” While still a boy in the convent at Quebec he was known as
young Joliet.[67]
After Jolliet entered active life the name was usually spelled with
two “l’s.” His earliest voyage is reported by the Sulpician, Galinée,
who met him in 1669 at the head of Lake Erie and calls him “le sieur
Jolliet.”[68] In 1671 he took part in the pageant of Sault Ste. Marie,
when he was again spoken of as “le sieur Jolliet.”[69] Father Claude
Dablon, who first reported the voyage of 1673, says, August 1, 1674,
“le sieur Jolliet” has come back from the West.[70] Count de
Frontenac, the governor-general of New France, in his first mention of
the voyager, speaks of him as “Joliet”;[71] but thereafter in
reporting his voyage and mentioning his maps he always writes the name
“Jolliet.”[72] Several unsigned documents of the same period refer to
him as “Jolliet.”[73] In 1677 a concession in Illinois was refused to
“le sieur Jolliet.”[74] In 1680 a concession of the island of
Anticosti was made to “Jolliet.”[75] Many more similar documents could
be cited showing that the prevalent use in the seventeenth century was
the form “Jolliet.”
Lastly, how did the man himself write his name? A map published in Dr.
R. G. Thwaites’s _Jesuit Relations_,[76] gives in the cartouche a
letter signed “Joliet.” This has usually been supposed to be the
explorer’s writing. A glance, however, at two authentic signatures
will convince that he never wrote the name on the map. The first
signature is from a tracing secured by Henry Legler for an article in
the Wisconsin Historical Society _Proceedings_, 1905, page 169. The
second is the signature to the marriage contract of which a facsimile
is given in Gagnon, page 122. A glance will show that these two names
were written by the same hand, and both are spelled “Jolliet.”
In view, therefore, of first, the usage of the best French authors;
second, the usage of the latter part of the seventeenth century, or
contemporary usage; and third, the signature of the explorer himself,
the spelling “Jolliet” is believed to be the proper one.