Rare French Boy Names

An aromatic, unconventional name.

Appealingly gentle and romantic French classic--with a lot more charm than Steve.

Very popular in France and Belgium, this name -- pronounced mat-tees, like the surname of the painter Matisse -- might make an appealing new way to say Matthew here.

Pronounced "crwa", this unusual name was chosen by Cedric the Entertainer for his son.

Alain gives the midcentury Alan a bit of gallic dash.

Luc is the sleeker Gallic cousin of Luke, and if you want to know the difference between their pronunciations, just watch Kevin Kline's hilarious description in the film French Kiss. Peter Gabriel and Sean Patrick Thomas picked this version for their sons.

An original choice for a fisherman's child.

Swaggering western place-name with a lot of cowboy bravado and panache.

Jasper is an internationally-popular name that takes many forms, among them Casper, Gaspar, and the French version Gaspard. Virtually unknown in the US, Gaspard is one of the Top 100 Boy Names in France.

Friendlier french form of ancient Germanic royal name Amalric or Emmerich.

A dashing French surname name most famously borne by Henry David Thoreau, an American naturalist, writer and philosopher who influenced such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. The most common modern American pronunciation is "thor-OH", with emphasis on the final syllable, although Thoreau himself pronounced it "THOR-oh".

This beautiful Breton saint's name peaked at #127 in France in 2006. It's still in the Top 500 there today, but remains almost unknown outside of France.

Pronounced TEE-bow, this version, which is also a very common surname in France, has a lot more charm than the name it derives from — Theobald. A variant spelling is Thibaut.

Truly original yet not strange name ripe for the plucking by the adventurous baby namer. Aurelius works too.

Mime Marcel Marceau actually had two versions of the same name. Marcel, Marceau, Marcella, Marcus, Mark -- all are variation of the Roman mythological name Mars, the god of war.

This buoyant name has the same bouncy rhythm as Rafferty and Barnaby, but is virtually unused. It has plenty of literary cred, too: characters in The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter and Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native have all borne the name.

Historically, the French and English name Florence was used for both sexes. And Florent is a steady classic in France, booming there in the 1980s. Maybe it's time to import it, and show that boys can be floral too.

Yannick originated as a diminutive of Yann, the Breton form of John. However, it has since become popular as a standalone name in its native region of Brittany, as well as in France as a whole, where it peaked at #31 in 1973-4. It remains well within the Top 500 in France to this day, and has also seen regular use in Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Quebec.