French Naming Patterns?

Question

I was wondering if the French typically used naming patterns when naming their children. I have an enormous amount of experience researching my Dutch ancestry and anyone who has done Dutch research knows, they were big on naming patterns. As far as researching French lines go, I am an infant. Any tips on French research would be appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

The French did indeed have naming traditions and they started with family and involved Church.

Every first-born son was generally named after the paternal grandfather. The second-born son was named after the maternal grandfather.

The first two daughters were generally named after their grandmothers, order would flip-flop depending on whether one was dead or not. Since maternal mortality was high, you'll often see the name of a deceased grandmother being used over and over again.

The next thing you'll run into is that most newborn babies were given a hyphenated name. Victor-Marie and Marie-Genevieve are two examples. The first is a male name who would be called Victor, with his female patron saint being honored in his name. But if it were used for a female, it would be that her name was Marie (and that would be the name in civil records), but St-Victor was her patron saint and it was the name under which all of her church records would be found. The second is the more common pre-1780...no flip-flopping of name usage. In that one, her patron saint was Ste-Marie and her given name was Genevieve. You'll find her always being called Marie-Genevieve in official records, except for censuses. There, only the common name "Genevieve" was used.

The last part is mind-boggling til you get used to it. They're called "dit" names. Literally, France couldn't figure out how they wanted to handle the new invention of the surname until Napoleon just put an end to it in the 1800s. They routinely interchanged 2 different names and would hyphenate them only for the Church. You could have a man named Hugues Picard who also used the name Hugues LaFortune. When he signed a contract, he could use either name. But when he went before God, he was Hugues Picard-dit-LaFortune. BUT...his children might be baptized under either name and later use the other. That was up to the priest to keep straight. The LaFortune might develop because he inherited a large fortune that he wasn't expecting, or got into a business venture that reaped unexpected windfalls.

Now here's the funny part about dit names...the sons of this man might take either name with them as their own surname, then develop their own dit names. So Hugues might have fathered Pierre and Rene. Pierre Picard could take the dit name LaGuerre because he was a great soldier. His brother might become Rene LaFortune and take the dit name LaVigne because he was a great vintner. A few generations of this and you'll be begging for the good old days of Dutch patrynomics. It takes a while to figure it out, but once you do, just muddle through until you get to some semblance of stability. The 1600s and 1700s are the worst. The 1400s and 1500s are far better.

Also know that in France, surnames weren't required until the 1600s. So you can have some regions still using patrynoms or they would use their patron saint for their surname. You might find someone name Martin-Jacques Gilles-St-Martin. His name was Martin, son of Gilles, whose patron was St-Martin. That's usually in the Franche-Comte and other eastern provinces where education was lacking, the parish priest kept all the records, and they didn't have much contact with the outside world so they didn't worry about this "surname" craziness.

Answer 2

French Naming Customs

Answer 3

Hey HSK Mama,

I use questions like this one to try to learn a little myself. While France is unified today, that was not always true. The first site below has Frankish Name Construction, Masculine and Feminine names from the Merovingian, and a host of other descriptive reports.

And of course, there is Wikipedia - there you must be careful. "French people have one, two or more given names. Only one of them, almost always the first, is used in daily life; the others are solely for official documents, such as birth, death and marriage certificates. Thus, one always speaks of Jacques Chirac and never of Jacques René Chirac; and Henri Philippe Pétain is always referred to as Philippe Pétain (or Marshal Pétain), because Philippe was the given name that he used in daily life. Middle initials are not used."

This wikipedia seems to do a fair job at introduction to French names. Hope this helps you in your quest.

Answer 4

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I think these names are really pretty and i have also added the french meaning in the brackets Cerise (Cherry) Amarante (Unfading) Béatrice (Voyager "though life") Élaine (Sun) Nadine (Hope) Geneva Laurette (Little Laurel tree) Édith (Rich battle) Célestine (Heavenly) Aurore (Dawn) Noëlle (Day of birth) Renée (Reborn)