I’m laughing my ass off right now . You know how we like to joke about Jean Valjean’s name cause it’s repetitive? In his first drafts, Hugo had named him Jean Tréjean… LITERALLY JEAN VERYJEAN
MUCH JEAN VERY BREAD
Which, when you think about it, is even weirder than “Valjean,” because at least there there’s a plausible origin story for that name, like, “You were too poor to afford a surname so everyone just called you voilà jean and that got changed to vlajean and that became valjean because no one can read.” But how would a name like “Tréjean” come about?
P.S. It’s truth in television though, if you look through my “matricules” tag you’ll see there were convicts in Toulon named Jean Mejean, Jean Jacques Emmanuel Dejean, Jean [probably originally Johann] John, Pierre Grandjean, and even Jean Jean.
Shit there’s more: Étienne Bonjean, Jean Petit-Jean, Michel Grosjean, Jean-Jacques Jean.
