French Last Name Generator

French surnames settled into hereditary form between the 12th and 15th centuries and have barely changed since, which is why the ten most common today (Martin, Bernard, Thomas, Petit, Robert, Richard, Durand, Dubois, Moreau, Laurent) are mostly medieval first names or simple descriptions. The big families of French last names are patronymics (Martin, Robert, Simon), trades (Lefebvre the smith, Boulanger the baker, Charpentier the carpenter), nicknames (Petit, Leblanc, Roux, Legrand) and places, often marked by du, de la, des or a bare geographic word (Dupont, Dubois, Fontaine, Rivière).

Region is the quickest way to make a French surname feel specific. Le Goff, Le Gall, Guéguen and anything starting with Ker- are Breton; Muller, Schmitt and Kieffer are Alsatian; Santucci, Orsini and Casanova are Corsican; Etcheverry and Irigoyen are Basque; Fabre, Cazenave and Pujol belong to the southwest; names beginning with Van- or De- in Nord come from Flemish; Tremblay, Gagnon and Bouchard mark Québec. Provence keeps Italianate endings in names like Isnard and Roustan.

French surnames have no male or female forms, so the same name works for any character. The particle de or d' belongs to the nobility and old landed families; it should be rare, and in dialogue the family is called Montmorency, not de Montmorency, unless the first name precedes it.