Was it so unusual for a man in sixteenth-century villages and burgs to change his name and fashion a new identity? Some of this went on all the time. The Daguerres left Hendaye, became the Guerres, and changed their ways. Every peasant who migrated any distance might be expected to do the same. And whether you moved or not, you might acquire a nickname, an alias. In Artigat it often had to do with your property, and in Sajas it had to do with you: one of Arnaud’s fellow villagers was nicknamed Tambourin,13 the drum, and he of course was Pansette.
