Names of France FR

INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) records Martin as the commonest surname in France; the names that most distinguish France from the rest of the world are Pierre, Francois and Michel.

Written in French.

Population
68M
Official registers
2
Name forms recorded
226K
ABuilt from 2 official registers (2024), 225,805 name forms in our corpus.

Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of France are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, France included.

How names work in France

Names in France follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in France

Counts not recorded by the publisher · authority tier 2
INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024), 2024 — 1,880 given names counted over a population the publisher did not record, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Louise285K73
2Jade107K—
5Emma174K—
8Rose115K—
9Alice209K—
10Anna126K—
16Julia81K—
21Eva94K—
22Jeanne566K30
27Juliette174K—
31Chloé159K—
34Léa209K—
36Charlotte154K—
43Lucie211K97
44Lola77K—
50Gabrielle103K—
56Inès103K—
60Maria143K—
65Sarah174K85
68Camille209K56

Where the two lists disagree

25 of INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) 2024Across all recordsmarie: 97 → 2 · ranks higher across all records97. marie2jeanne: 22 → 30 · ranks lower across all records22. jeanne30nathalie: 2213 → 16 · ranks higher across all records2213. nathalie16isabelle: 690 → 7 · ranks higher across all records690. isabelle7anne: 676 → 11 · ranks higher across all records676. anne11louise: 1 → 73 · ranks lower across all records1. louise73
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024), 2024 on the left; every record we hold for France on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of France

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when France holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

PierreFrancoisMichelAlainMarcelJacquesClaudeChristopheBernardPatrickJeanSylvieCatherineLaurentGuillaumeGerardRobertOlivierThierryMartineJacquelineChristianAntoinePascalThomasPhilippeReneDominiqueJulienSandrineChristineCamilleSimoneRogerFredericMauriceNicoleGeorgesLouiseVincentFabienDidierGuyJulieBrunoYvesRomainPatriciaChantalAurelieRaymondDeniseSuzanneCharlesVirginieFranckElodieBrigitteLaurenceLucien
Sized by how much of the difference between France's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Over time

MarieJeanneFrançoiseMoniqueCatherine200720242,230,810
INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024), 1900–2024 (125 years). The line is that register's own figure for each year — not a total across registers, which would count the same people twice. The publisher labels this series “flow”.

Up to five names at a time.

Scripts & spelling

Jeangiven name●
Mariegiven name●
Pierregiven name●
Stephanegiven name●
Francoisgiven name●
The best-attested names in France, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1991headline (surnames)

    INSEE. Counts: not recorded. surname. 218,867 forms. 1891–1991. Licence: Licence Ouverte 2.0.

    What we know about this register

    ~219,000 distinct surnames, frequencies by decade of birth 1891–2000, national and departmental. Only names ≥30 occurrences. Published 2018, no newer edition planned.

    Last verified 2026-05-09.

  • INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024headline (given)

    INSEE. Counts: not recorded. given. 1,880 forms. 1900–2024. Licence: Licence Ouverte 2.0.

    What we know about this register

    Normalized from the INSEE interactive-tool XML (prenoms_serie1000_min10.xml, ~4.5MB): per-name yearly series [year,count,rank] 1900-2024, counts rounded to nearest 5, names with <10 lifetime occurrences suppressed. 8,116 (name,sex) rows, 7,760 distinct names; count = lifetime sum of the series, year/rank = latest year. Full CSV birth-file (national+departmental, ~711k/~3.9M rows) also available on data.gouv.fr and from /fr/statistiques/fichier/.

    Last verified 2026-06-04.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

What is the most common given name in France?
Marie, according to INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) (2024), with 2,230,810 bearers recorded among girls.
What is the most common surname in France?
Martin, according to INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) (1991), with 21,622 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in France?
Because they count different people. INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) (2024) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Marie. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Jean. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of France”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/FR (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024).