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French Baby Names: The latest trends in French prenoms

French Baby Names: The latest trends in French prenoms

Baby names in France have never been shorter: exit Sébastien, Alexandre, Frédéric, Caroline, Nathalie, Angélique—the popular names of the 1980’s.  Emma, Léa, Clara now take the limelight as the most popular French girl names, while Lucas, Enzo and Nathan dominate the popularity list of French boy names.

As a result, diminutives such as Lou, Tom, Théo and Alex are doing wonders.  Few analysts would have predicted such a phenomenon in a culture which used to disdain diminutives as merely “half names".

Ending sounds are also shaping to a large extent what becomes trendy and what does not.  Fashionable feminine French names tend to end in the vowel ‘a’ (Emma, Sara, Léa, Clara, Lola, Éva, Louna and Lina being in the forefront).  Then there’s the explosion caused by Lilou, a new name which has led to the discovery of Louane and renewed interest in hyphenated names such as Lou–Anne.  For boys, names with ‘eo’ vowel juxtapositions abound, as in Léo, Théo, Mathéo, also o-endings (Hugo, Enzo) and names ending in ‘an’—Nathan, Ethan, Kylian, Evan, Esteban.

American names are still used in France, but not nearly as much as in the 1990’s.  The new wave has brought more European names than ever.  Italian names (Carla, Enzo, Matteo), Greek names (Yanis), and Spanish names (Inès, Lola) are flourishing.  Not to mention the highly fashionable Irish names (Kylian, Ryan), which have had an international success.  American parents now pick names from all over the world, but it seems unlikely to me that they will adopt real, typical names such as Océane, Manon or Malo.”

On her site, Stéphanie also offers her predictions for the Top 20 boys’ and girls’ names for 2010.  These are not based on instinct, but on a careful analysis of data provided by the French National Statistics Office from the past five years, from which she makes her projections.  They are:

FRENCH GIRL NAMES

  1. EMMA

  2. CHLOÉ

  3. SARAH

  4. LÉA

  5. CLARA

  6. INÈS

  7. JADE

  8. MANON

  9. MAËLYS

  10. LOLA

  11. CAMILLE

  12. LOUNA

  13. LILOU

  14. LUCIE

  15. LOUISE

  16. ROMANE

  17. ANAÏS

  18. LINA

  19. LOUANE

  20. LILY

FRENCH BOY NAMES

  1. LUCAS

  2. MATHIS

  3. MATHÉO

  4. ENZO

  5. NATHAN

  6. NOAH

  7. RAPHAËL

  8. LOUIS

  9. KYLIAN

  10. ETHAN

  11. HUGO

  12. THÉO

  13. YANIS

  14. GABRIEL

  15. THOMAS

  16. EVAN

  17. TOM

  18. MAXIME

  19. CLÉMENT

  20. ARTHUR

About the Author

Stephanie Rapoport

Stephanie Rapoport

Stephanie Rapoport created MeilleursPrenoms.com with her husband Stuart in 2000, frustrated because “it had been so hard to choose the names of our children and the web at that time did not provide great sites such as Nameberry and MeilleursPrenoms”  Her first book, Officiel des prenoms” was published in 2002 and she has been enriching it with new name statistics analysis every year since.  On February 18th, a new book about unusual names, “Les 4000 plus beaux prenoms rares” will be coming out in France.