Dubois

Name Variants

• Du Bois
• Bois
• Duboi
• Delabois
• Boislève

Origin & History

Medieval France was a forested country. The great woods covered perhaps a third of the land — the Ardennes, the Forêt d'Orléans, the Forêt de Rambouillet, the forests of Normandy and Brittany. The forest edge was where villages ended and wildness began, where charcoal-burners and woodcutters and poachers lived, where hermits established their cells, where the feudal lord's hunting rights were most jealously enforced.

The man who lived du bois — by the wood — was at this boundary. In the naming conventions of the 12th and 13th centuries, his location became his name. The family at the forest edge became the Dubois family.

Unlike some topographic surnames that concentrate in particular regions, Dubois is genuinely national — it appears in early records from Normandy to Provence, from Brittany to Alsace, because every region of France had forests, and someone always lived at their edge. The name is particularly dense in the north and east — Normandy, Picardy, the Ardennes — where the great medieval forests were most extensive.

The most famous Dubois in American history arrived as a Huguenot refugee. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868, could trace his ancestry to Alfred Du Bois, whose family had come from the French Protestant community that fled to New England after 1685. Du Bois himself often reflected on this heritage — a Black man in America whose very surname marked him as a descendant of French Protestant refugees, a double displacement that informed his understanding of history and belonging. He became one of the towering intellectual figures of the 20th century: founder of the Niagara Movement, co-founder of the NAACP, author of The Souls of Black Folk, editor of The Crisis for a quarter century. He died in Accra, Ghana, in 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington.

Notable Bearers

W.E.B. Du Bois

American civil rights leader, sociologist, and co-founder of the NAACP — born in Massachusetts, his surname came from Huguenot ancestors who settled in New England

Marie Dubois

French actress celebrated in Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player and Jules et Jim

Simon Dubois

17th-century Quebec settler whose descendants became one of the most numerous Dubois families in North America

The French Diaspora

The Dubois name arrived in North America through two main streams. Huguenot refugees — including the ancestors of W.E.B. Du Bois — settled in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, and New England. French-Canadian settlers brought the name to Quebec in the 17th century; the descendants of Simon Dubois and his contemporaries spread through the St. Lawrence Valley and eventually throughout North America.

In Louisiana, Dubois is associated with the Creole community — the mixed-heritage families who emerged from the colonial period. In New England, it is often found among French-Canadian mill workers who moved south in the 19th century. In the midwest, Dubois County in Indiana (named for the Huguenot-descended family) testifies to the name's presence in the frontier era.

Genealogy Research Tips

Dubois research in France concentrates in the Archives départementales of Seine-Maritime (Normandy), the Somme (Picardy), and the Ardennes. For Huguenot Dubois families, the Huguenot Society of London and the Huguenot Historical Society in New Paltz, New York both hold relevant records — New Paltz was founded by Huguenot refugees including Dubois families.

Quebec Dubois research begins with the PRDH database. For W.E.B. Du Bois specifically, the Du Bois Papers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst contain his correspondence, manuscripts, and family research.