Yves
given name · French · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Yves is a given name, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 76th most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From Breton/Old French, from Germanic Ivo, 'yew'.
- FRFrance1 in 296◐
- MQMartinique1 in 386
- CMCameroon1 in 764
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈235K ●
- Sources
- 380 ●
- 1 in 296 ◐
across 7 countries
476K records
Official registry-verified
France
Meaning & origin●
From Breton/Old French, from Germanic Ivo, 'yew'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #76 | 229,375 | 382K rec. | 1 in 296 | 229K | Yves | 380 |
| CA Canada | #505 | 21,642 | 19K rec. | — | 2 | Yves | 176 |
| BE Belgium | #61 | 18,575 | 18K rec. | — | — | Yves | 170 |
| PH Philippines | — | 6,746 | 3K rec. | — | — | Yves | 63 |
| CH Switzerland | #97 | 6,338 | 3.2K rec. | — | — | Yves | 128 |
| US United States | — | 4,203 | 29K rec. | 1 in 79K | 4.2K | Yves | 317 |
| CM Cameroon | #23 | 2,551 | 2.5K rec. | — | — | Yves | 50 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | #354 | 1,820 | 1.9K rec. | — | — | Yves | 42 |
| MQ Martinique | #49 | 1,679 | 43 rec. | — | 5 | Yves | 18 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,202 | 1.2K rec. | 1 in 176K | 1.2K | Yves | 96 |
| MX Mexico | — | 1,020 | 903 rec. | — | — | Yves | 82 |
| AR Argentina | — | 994 | 800 rec. | — | 2 | Yves | 27 |
Roughly 229K people in France bear this name (about 1 in 296). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- French1.3M90%
- English49K3%
- Portuguese21K1%
- Spanish12K1%
- German12K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| French | 1,308,924 | 90% |
| English | 48,766 | 3% |
| Portuguese | 20,692 | 1% |
| Spanish | 11,811 | 1% |
| German | 11,702 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Yves is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Breton classic; Celtic origin, meaning 'if'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
From a short form of a Germanic compound name containing the element iv- ‘yew’. St Yve was an r1th-century bishop of Chartres. Also: Yvon.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In French, a male given name, borne by two French saints, and known in medieval romance
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Du breton Ivo/iv, « if »; saint Yves de Tréguier (Kermartin), fêté le 19 mai.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, Du vieux breton Iuos/Ivoy, généralement rattaché au germanique ou au celtique ; prénom de saint breton.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1903 | 5 |
| 1904 | 5 |
| 1906 | 5 |
| 1907 | 5 |
| 1908 | 5 |
| 1909 | 5 |
| 1910 | 10 |
| 1911 | 10 |
| 1912 | 10 |
| 1913 | 5 |
| 1914 | 5 |
| 1915 | 10 |
| 1916 | 10 |
| 1917 | 10 |
| 1918 | 5 |
| 1919 | 5 |
| 1920 | 10 |
| 1921 | 10 |
| 1922 | 15 |
| 1923 | 10 |
| 1924 | 15 |
| 1925 | 20 |
| 1926 | 10 |
| 1927 | 20 |
| 1928 | 15 |
| 1929 | 15 |
| 1930 | 20 |
| 1931 | 20 |
| 1932 | 25 |
| 1933 | 30 |
| 1934 | 35 |
| 1935 | 35 |
| 1936 | 45 |
| 1937 | 45 |
| 1938 | 55 |
| 1939 | 50 |
| 1940 | 45 |
| 1941 | 50 |
| 1942 | 45 |
| 1943 | 40 |
| 1944 | 50 |
| 1945 | 35 |
| 1946 | 55 |
| 1947 | 60 |
| 1948 | 50 |
| 1949 | 70 |
| 1950 | 60 |
| 1951 | 40 |
| 1952 | 50 |
| 1953 | 50 |
| 1954 | 40 |
| 1955 | 35 |
| 1956 | 45 |
| 1957 | 40 |
| 1958 | 30 |
| 1959 | 35 |
| 1960 | 25 |
| 1961 | 20 |
| 1962 | 25 |
| 1963 | 35 |
| 1964 | 25 |
| 1965 | 20 |
| 1966 | 25 |
| 1967 | 20 |
| 1968 | 10 |
| 1969 | 15 |
| 1970 | 10 |
| 1971 | 15 |
| 1972 | 10 |
| 1973 | 5 |
| 1974 | 5 |
| 1975 | 5 |
| 1976 | 10 |
| 1977 | 5 |
| 1978 | 10 |
| 1979 | 5 |
| 1980 | 5 |
| 1983 | 5 |
| 1985 | 5 |
| 1988 | 5 |
| 1989 | 5 |
| 1991 | 5 |
| 1993 | 5 |
| 1995 | 5 |
| 1996 | 5 |
| 2001 | 5 |
| 2005 | 5 |
| 2010 | 5 |
| 2016 | 5 |
RE INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion) — 89 years between 1903–2016. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Gilbert du Motier de La Fayetteb. 1757FRnot in their usual nameFrench general and politician (1757–1834)
- Yves Montandb. 1921FRFrench-Italian actor and singer (1921–1991)
- Yves Kleinb. 1928FR20th century French visual artist (1928–1962)
- Yves Chauvinb. 1930FRFrench chemist (1930–2015)
- Pierre-Gilles de Gennesb. 1932FRnot in their usual nameFrench physicist
- Yves Saint Laurentb. 1936FRFrench fashion designer (1936–2008)
- Yves Letermeb. 1960BEformer Belgian prime minister
- Stéphane Guivarc'hb. 1970FRnot in their usual nameFrench footballer (born 1970)
- Charles Michelb. 1975BEnot in their usual nameBelgian politician, former Prime Minister of Belgium, President of the European Council
- Samuel Umtitib. 1993CMnot in their usual nameFrench footballer (born 1993)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 78 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 229K | #1,748 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.2K | #4,199 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #7,298 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 1K | #2,057 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1K | #9,218 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 341 | #2,531 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 340 | #4,199 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 288 | #4,039 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 183 | #9,656 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 176 | #4,623 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 148 | #5,943 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 747 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Yves?
- We estimate roughly 235 thousand people bear Yves (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
- In which country does Yves have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 229 thousand people bear Yves in France, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled yves.
- Where is Yves most common?
- Yves is densest in France, where the national register counts about 1 in 296 people carrying it.
- How common is Yves compared with other names?
- In France, Yves is the 76th most common given name of 711,207 given names recorded there.
- Is Yves a male or female name?
- Yves is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Yves mean?
- Recorded meaning: From Breton/Old French, from Germanic Ivo, 'yew'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/yvesThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Yves” — the 76th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.