Medieval French Name Generator

Medieval French names look different depending on who you were. Nobles carried a given name plus a territorial byname introduced by de (of): Enguerrand de Coucy, Blanche de Castille, Raymond de Toulouse. That de did not yet mean nobility as such; it simply named the fief, castle or town the person came from. Kings and great lords were often known instead by an epithet, le Bel (the Fair), le Hardi (the Bold), le Gros (the Fat), Cœur de Lion, or by ordinal numbers added later by historians. Women were named for their fathers' lands, so Aliénor d'Aquitaine and Marguerite de Provence tell you exactly which inheritance they carried.

Commoners had no fixed surnames until roughly the 13th to 14th centuries. Before then a peasant or craftsman was identified by trade (Perrin le Charpentier, Colin le Fèvre), by appearance or temperament (Jaquet le Roux, Foucaud le Borgne, Mahiet Bonenfant), by place (Perrot du Pont, Guillot du Chesne) or by a nickname compound (Sanschemise, Boileau, Malvoisin). Given names came from a small stock: Jehan, Guillaume, Pierre, Robert, Hugues and Raoul for men; Jehanne, Marie, Aalis, Isabeau, Perrenelle and Guillemette for women, frequently in diminutive forms like Perrin, Colin, Jaquet, Marion and Isabelet.

Southern France spoke Occitan rather than French, and its troubadours and Cathar lords used distinct spellings: Bernart de Ventadorn, Raimbaut d'Aurenga, Esclarmonde de Foix. This list mixes historical figures, plausible commoner names, and Occitan forms so you can pick a name that fits both the class and the region of your character.