I am a proud member of the Faure family and this website is my humble tribute to a family that played an important part in the early history of our country.
Origins of the name
Faure is an Occitan family name (meaning blacksmith, from the Latin 'Faber'). Regional or dialect variants include Favre, Fauré, Lefèvre. The Occitan language is still spoken along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, from Spain to Italy and in particular in the French administrative region Occitanie.
Faure in France
There are about 49,000 people in France with the family name Faure (2015 statistics), which rank it 33rd on the list of common family names.
The name Faure also appear in many historic documents in France. You will find the name among nobility, as a past President, and in many other walks of life. For example, the records of employees of King Loius XIV at the Palace of Versailles list the name Faure, three of them in fact, and there were those with the name Faure listed as victims of La Guillotine.
The move to South Africa
By the end of the 17th century and into the 18th century, roughly 500,000 French Protestants, or Huguenots as they were known, had fled France during a series of religious persecutions. One of these Hugenots, Antoine Faure, arrived in Table Bay on 24/03/1714 on board the Dutch ship Kockengen.
It is worth reading the interesting story of Antoine and life in Europe at the time, the route he followed from Orange through France, Switzerland, Germany and Netherlands. How the voyage by sea has influenced the first steps to settling in the Cape. This epic journey was researched and compiled by Dr AG Faure and it is with great appreciation that we include this valuable documented history in our family tree.
The Faure family tree
Much effort and many hours have been spent by a number of people in tracing the roots of the family.
All the information is available for you to see. I include two versions of the Family Tree on this site. An electronic version which makes it easy for you to find an individual. This version already includes all the family members while more general information is being added at the moment. There is also a .pdf version available that actually contain more detailed information.
If you have more information of the Faure family that you would like to share, or if you want to correct some of our information, or even if you just want to chat, you are welcome to contact me here:
faure @ faure.co.za
