Need assistance with a French first name

Question

Could someone with larger knowlege of French name please have a look at the baptism for Jeremie Surprenant? His baptism record does not say Jeremie. To me it looks like Hehremi. Is this just a misspelling or is there another name that it could be?

The earliest records (attached to bio) I've found call him Remi(e). After moving to Michigan he becomes either Jeremiah or Jerry in the rest of the records.

Answer 1

I am having a hard time with the middle name as well, but I wonder, if the third letter is lower case L and not lower case H. This would make the middle start with "Hel..." I tried looking at some of the other names in the record, but it's just just so hard to tell.

Answer 2

lol, IGD reads it as Joseph Nébémie.  Looks more like Joseph Néheimi to me.  Compare the first letter to the word Nous just above it.  The h, compare to huit on first line.  

Somebody is pulling Old Testament names out, viz, Nehemiah, which turns into Néhémie in French.  The priest can't spell it.  

And by the way cousins, there's no such thing as a ''middle name'' in French, the words translate but the concept doesn't.  They are ALL given names (prénoms).

Comments

Thanks for the input everybody. I'm going to go with Néhémie. I can definitely see how that could be changed to Jeremiah. I suspect though that not only did the priest misspell Néhémie, I think he probably also misheard it since Jeremiah was already being called Remie by the time he was a year old. It may have been intended to be whatever the French equivalent of Jeremiah is. (Jérémie?)

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yes, Jeremiah is Jérémie.  And I'm not sure if the father was present at the baptism or not, in which case the godparents would have told the priest the name to use, adding more possible points of confusion.  

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It seems that it must be Néhémie (Nehemiah) but that initial capital letter looks exactly like the capital H on the list of names that start with H (lots of loops) on the page before and not at all like the N you see on the names that start with N (no loops).

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look at ''Nous'' just above his name.  Same form for the letter N

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Ah, I was looking at the index (link in comment above), which definitely changed that letter from the record itself. Whoever wrote the index was just as confused!