Schwarts > Noir > Noar
   According to a family story in the Solomon branch, the Noar family originally came from Germany where the name was Schwartz (German for black).  They then moved to France to escape military service.  They changed the name to Noir (French for black).  At some point it was anglicized to Noar.
   If the family moved from France to the Russian-speaking Baltic states, the name Noir would have been spelled Hoap in Cyrillic. Hoap is pronounced Noar in English.

Dr. Hayim Y. Sheynin: Linguist
   "It is very interesting.  I know many languages and academically studied linguistics. When I saw your name for the first time, it crossed my mind that there are at least two possibilities for etymology of Noar (the first one Hebrew, the second French).   And French seems to me more plausible from linguistic point.  Generally people who have name from this root (nun-ayin-resh) have it in the form Naar (Mostly Sephardim or Romaniotim) and Noor (Ashkenazim), rarely Naor
(presumably from root nun-aleph-resh) which means 'enlightened'.  The only strange feeling from etymology Noar-noir is that in French it is pronounced nu-ahrrr,  but it could be that not the sounds, but the letters were romanized in the country where people do not speak French.
In addition to my linguistic notes, I can say that combination -oa- is widely known in Romanian language as an equivalent to French -oi-."

Bride's Visit to Vilna
  In the 1980's, an advertisement was placed in a newspaper in NYC by Rae Levine looking for Abraham Noar (Yudel branch).  Abraham and his grown children visited Rae and her huband Eli in NY.  Rae explained that when she was a young woman traveling to Russia to be married, she stopped at her "Uncle's" house in Vilna.  She remembered that Abe and his brother had to leave the dinner early, needing to get up early then next morning to catch a boat to America.  Once reminded, Abe then remembered her visit.  When was asked where she was traveling from,  the anwer was France.  She went on to explain that the family came from or part of it was in France.
However, this story may not be an indication of a french connection.   I found some handwritten notes from an interview with Julius Noar (Abe's brother).  They mention that Rae was his cousin and his mother's sister had married a french Jew.

German Docter's Comments (as told by Myron Noar)
   In 1974 I was in Frankfurt, Germany.  We (Merck) were having a meeting with a German
Company (Boehringer-Ingelheim) about co-marketing vaccines.  The meeting was already in progress when I arrived from the U.S.
   As I made it to my seat around the table, I noticed that one of the German attendees was staring  at me as if he knew me, but was trying remember from where or when.  I was not the
best on remembering names and so I assumed it was someone I had met before, but had obviously forgotten about.
   When we broke for coffee, we sort of came together, and looked at each other's
name tags.  He was a physician, about 70 years of age, and after the formalities of shaking hands, he asked me what was the nationality of my father.  I said he  was an American.  He said "No, no, I mean what country did he come from originally."
   I told him he was Jewish, and had originally come from Poland  to the United
States.
   He said he knew that the name Noar was Jewish; in fact he said the name in
Hebrew meant "young man", and that he knew all of this because during the war
he and a number of other physicians serving in the German Army were quartered
in the home of a Jewish family in France that had been  forced  to leave.
   Pictures were still on the wall, and a large prayer book was on a table with
the names of the members of the family  in it,  Their family name was "Noar"
as he recalled it.  But, more important, every day for four  years he
returned to that house and saw the pictures of the family still left on the
walls.
   When I walked into the meeting, he could not see my name tag, but he did
stare at me because, as he said, I looked like someone he had seen before and
could not remember when or where.
   When he saw  the name, he made the connection to the pictures in the house of
the Noar family in France during the war.

Bucky's Recollection
Around the 1940's, when Joseph Noar died, the lawyers involved in the estate did Noar family research, looking for heirs. Bucky Noar recalls hearing from his father Abraham, Joseph's nephew, that the lawyers had found many distant relatives, including ones in France.

Isaac Branch Stories
According to Homer Noar, of the Isaac Branch, his father Henry always said there were alot of Noar family connections in France
 
 

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