French Nobility Name Generator

French nobility names are built from three parts, and getting the order right is most of the work. First comes the given name, then a particle (de, du, des, or d' before a vowel), then the name of the land the family held: Aimery de Valcourt, Gabrielle du Bellay, Blanche des Ursins, Pierre d'Aubusson. The land name is the surname. When a house absorbed a second lordship by marriage or inheritance, it hyphenated the two (Clermont-Tonnerre, Rohan-Guéméné, Talleyrand-Périgord), and the longer the chain, the older and prouder the family usually was.

Titles sit in front of all of that and follow a fixed ladder: chevalier and écuyer at the bottom, then baron, vicomte, comte, marquis, duc, and the princes of the blood above them. A title attaches to a fief, not a person, so the Comte de Valmont is count of Valmont, and his wife is the Comtesse de Valmont. Younger sons took a lesser fief of the family and became, say, the Chevalier de Saint-Aubin while their elder brother was the Marquis.

Given names mark the century. Medieval lords were Enguerrand, Foulques, Eudes, Mahaut and Ermengarde; the Renaissance court favored Henri, Diane and Anne; Versailles produced compound names like Louis-Marie, Charles-Henri and Marie-Thérèse. This generator mixes all three eras so you can pick the period that fits.