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On the webpage concearning the meaning of our name, we concluded that the original form of our family name is the Picardian name de le Roke.
Since the word roke in the name de le Roke/van de roke refers to a quarry or a rocky hill, we've tried to find out where this roke could be situated.
This place that gave our earliest forfathers their family name must heve been the place where they lived.
Because the name de le Roke is a Picardian name, and not a French one, this name must have come into existence before 1350 in the region between Picardie (now a French département) and Hainaut (now a Belgian province).
The search for the name de le Roke revealed that de le Roke families were living in the towns of Valenciennes and Tournai, and in the villages on the linguistic border Ellezelles, Flobecq and Schorisse.
In the second half of the 14th century, the van de roke family settled in Berchem and Gent.
Since Berchem is only a few miles away from Schorisse, Ellezelles and Flobecq, and the conststation that as well Berchem and Gent, and Valenciennes and Tournay are situated along the Scheldt river, all these de le Roke families could have been the ancestors of the van de roke family.
The search for a toponym roke in the region where the Picardian language was spoken, resulted in a variety of possibilities.
In the region just south of the linguistic border exploitable vains of bluestone can be found on multiple locations, so there are quite a few rokes to be found.
Yet, the combination of a de le Roke family and a place named roke could only be found in 2 places :in Flobecq and in Tournai.
After thorough investigation we can conclude that the use of family names in Tournai started around the year 1200.
In this early phase of the urban evolution of Tournai, there were small rokes all over the city : for example : the stones used to build the big cathedral where dug up at the spot.
Since the purpose of the use of family names was the unambiguous identification of a certain person, it could hardly have been appropriate to indicate someone as "living next to the roke" : there were so many rokes in town that this did not provide additional information.
F.J. Bozière proved in his book "Tournai Ancien et Moderne", that some streets were named after the families who lived there.
It is our conviction that the rue de le roke in early Tournai was named after the de le Roke family ,who settled there around 1200, but who had got their name from somewhere else.
All this is of course extremely interesting, but in this context it's exactly the opposite of what we were looking for...
In Flobecq, a village near the linguistic border, we find a different situation :
In 1275, Jehan of Pamele-Oudenaarde, gave the instruction to redact a book in which all the fiefs he possessed were written down, their exact location and mesure, the names of the feudal tenants and the sum they payed.
This Veil Rentier is probably the oldest book of a medieval noble family that has been preserved.
The book is inluminated with some 150 drawings of scenes from everyday life of the farmer and the craftsman.
The book is written in the Picardian language.
The baron of Pamele-Oudenaarde had fiefs in approximatly 50 villages, and in the list of the feudal tenures and their tenants in Flobecq, we found a place called roke, where a de le Roke family was living, who was named after this toponym!!
This place roke was situated in southwest-Flobecq, on a height nearby the forest de le Roke.
Adjacent to this forest de le Roke was situated the masure de le Roke, the farm where the de le Roke family lived.
In origin, a masure was a farm with neighbouring ground, large enough to sustain one family.
In a lot of villages where the clercs of Jehan van Pamele-Oudenaarde registered the tenants of the feudal tenures, a lot of persons were given the name of the place where they lived.
Thus, the places Baudrengien and Homeliwés, situated next to the masure de le Roke in Flobecq, generated the family names "de Baudrengien" and "de Homeliwés", and there was a Bauduin d'Ancre named after the Ancre river that flows through Flobecq.
We found the oldest mention of this masure de le Roke in 1148.
We can prove that the de le Roke families from Flobecq and Tournai are in fact one family, and we found that at least one member of the Delerocque family from Tournai was registered as vander Roke in Flanders.
In south-west-Flobecq, a village on the linguistic border, we were able to locate the place roke where, at the end of the 13
This was without doubt the origin of our family name, and the place where our earliest forfathers lived!
In the text regarding the toponym roke you can read that this place roke can be found and reached easily even today...
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