I have been working on a family tree for Bouchat (present day spelling) and have been having a heck of a time locating family with all the variant's of name changes at the turn of the century with churchs going to english base spelling. Anyway.... This is some information I found about the Ethinic origin of this surname.

From Morton Montgomery's History of Berks County, Pennsylvania, 1909 edition, pp. 16-20.

French

Among the Huguenots, there were many settlers with French names, which may be found in the lists of the first taxables to the east of the Schuylkill. The spelling has been changed so much that they can hardly be recognized, this having been done by the assessors t conform to the English or the German pronunciation. Some of these names and changes will be enumerated: BARDO or BARTO was Bardeau; BUSHONG, Beauchamp; BUSHOUR, Boucher or Buchat; BERTOLET, Berthollet; BAST, Baste; DEISHER, Duchere; DETURCK, De Turcq; DIPPERY, Duprez; DILPLAIN, Delaplaine; LESSIG, Lesecq; LORAH, Larue; MONYER, Monnier; PLANK, De la Plank; SHARADIN, Giradin; SHAPPELL, Chappelle; SHOMO, Chaumont. Several of the unchanged names are BOYER, DELCAMP, DELONG, LEVAN.

Full listing at page below:

http://berks.pa-roots.com/library/NationalitiesInEarlyBerks....