French Name Generator

French names come from a small, very stable pool of given names and a huge, regionally distinct pool of surnames. Until 1993 French parents could only choose from an approved calendar of saints' names, which is why Louis, Jean, Pierre, Marie, Jeanne and Catherine recur through every generation. Today's birth registers are led by Gabriel, Raphaël, Léo, Louis and Arthur for boys and Jade, Louise, Emma, Ambre and Alba for girls, while grandparents carry Gérard, Monique, Bernard and Jacqueline. Hyphenated compounds such as Jean-Pierre, Marie-Claire and Anne-Sophie are one name, not two, and were especially fashionable from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Surnames reveal geography. Martin, Bernard, Dubois and Durand are everywhere, but Le Goff, Le Gall and Kerouac mark Brittany; Muller, Schmitt and Kieffer mark Alsace; Santucci, Orsini and Casanova are Corsican; Fabre, Cazenave and Lartigue are southwestern; Tremblay, Gagnon and Bouchard are Québécois. Many surnames are old trades (Lefebvre, Boulanger, Charpentier) or descriptions (Petit, Leblanc, Roux).

The particle de or du signals a noble or landed family (de Montfort, de Villiers), which makes it the go-to for fantasy aristocrats; commoners in the same story should get plain trade or place surnames for contrast. Keep accents: Léa, Noël and François lose their pronunciation without them.