Recently I have had a reply from a reader to this website. The reply was so interesting I feel it was worthy enough of a post on it’s own, so here it is:
Please pardon me my poor written English. I hope you will understand most of this message.
My mother’s maiden name is Lozouet and there was an Ozouet family living in Guernsey until 1802. I know quite a lot about this family. You can ask me what you do not know yet and I might be of some help.
As for the final “t”, I do not know about your Jersey family but I certainly know that our ancestor Jean-Baptiste Lozouet who left La Haye-du-Puits in 1772 for Paris already had this final “t” in his surname.
It seems all Ozouets, Lozues, Lozuets and Lozouets share the same ancestry. There was only one spelling and one name (L’Ozouët) in 1519 in Cotentin (Normandy) before they split in different branches, the ones who adopted Reformation leaving for the Channel Islands while the ones who remained Roman Catholics stayed on the continent.
Different spellings were written in various documents due to misunderstanding or bad pronounciation.
The meaning of the name “L’Ozouët” comes from the Breton language. When the Kings of Brittany occupied nowadays Cotentin before the year 933, they brought some Breton settlers with them. Among those, there was one L’Ozouët. But the names became permanent only during the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. The people name L’Ozouët then might not be of this descent.
In any event, the name refers to a person who practices herbalism. The plants this herbalist uses are collectively named an “Ozouët” in Breton.
Yours truly,
Ivan Lazarevitch
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I had already written about a Mirko Lazarevic – Lozuet de Bokor-Kreki in a previous post. So to have a reply from an Ivan Lazarevitch was a joy!
My Channel Island Ancestry 
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