Names
Dumas used several names in his life: Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, Thomas Rethoré (or Retoré), Alexandre Dumas, Alex Dumas, and finally Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie. "Davy de la Pailleterie" is his father's family name. He used the name "Retoré" (sometimes spelled Rethoré) during and for some years after the period in which his father sold him and then re-purchased him (1775-1776). According to the biographer Tom Reiss, the name Retoré "was perhaps picked up from a neighbor in Jérémie (where the name can be found on official records of the period)." The name Dumas is from his mother. The first record of his use of the name "Alexandre Dumas" is his entry in the registry book of the Queen's Dragoons, which he joined on June 2, 1786. (It was known in his platoon that this was "not his real name.") He used the simple form "Alex Dumas" starting in 1794. General Dumas used the full name "Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie" on his son's birth certificate
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Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Almanacked, their names live; they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,”
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“Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, “just in case” in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.”
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