Merle, Merlet, Marlatt, Malott: How Our Name Changed

In France: Merle and Merlet

The earliest records of the family, at Roucy in Champagne, spell the name Merle or Marle; Gedeon’s father appears as Josias Marle or Merle. In French, -et is a common ending meaning “little,” and by Gedeon’s day the name had become Merlet or Merlette. Spelling was not fixed in the 1600s. Clerks wrote what they heard, and Gedeon himself appears in the records of Leiden, Mannheim, New Amsterdam and Staten Island as Merlet, Merlette, Marlet, Marlett, Merleth, Merlitt, Marlitt and even Murlet. The timeline of his life counts them.

In New York and New Jersey: “MAR-lett”

Gedeon’s English-speaking neighbors on Staten Island and in New Jersey pronounced Merlet as “MAR-lett,” and the spelling followed the sound. The descendants of his sons Josias and Abraham became the Marletts, Marlatts and Marlettes, the spellings still most common among the family today.

Jean Pierre drops the “r”

Gedeon’s youngest son, Jean Pierre, known in English as John Peter, lost the “r” altogether. He was often recorded as John Peterson Melot, Mellat or Mallat, and from him come the Mellotts and Malotts.

Mellott or Malott? It depends on the mother

Jean Pierre’s son Theodorus was baptized in 1694 as Melot, but signed his own name Malot. Both spellings survived through his two families:

• With his first wife, Catherine Maple, he had a son, John, whose descendants, mainly in Pennsylvania, became the Mellotts.
• Most of the children of his second wife, Catherine DeLashmutt, among them Peter and Benjamin, carried on the Malott spelling in Maryland, and from there in Kentucky, Ohio and beyond.

Even then the spelling wandered. Peter Malott’s own will of 1804 is signed “Peter Melott” and names his sons as “Dory Melott,” “John Melott” and so on, although the family was by then usually written Malott. The Malotts who settled near St. Catharines, Ontario, spelled it Marlotte. See Families of Peter Malott and Joseph Malott.

The merlette

The name may also carry a picture. In French heraldry a merlette is a small stylized bird, a martlet, usually shown without feet, and the arms of the Marlot family of Champagne are said to bear three merlettes, a heraldic pun on the name. The arms our family displays today, at the French Church du Saint-Esprit in New York, show three silver stars instead. See Our Family Crest.

Spelling isn’t destiny

A spelling tells you which branch a family probably belongs to, but not always. DNA testing has shown that the Marlatt and Malott branches, despite sharing a paper trail back to Gedeon, carry noticeably different Y-DNA, one of the puzzles described in the Marlatt-Merlet DNA Project report. To see everyone on this site under each spelling, use the surname list on the home page.