French Name Generator

Press the button and you get one to fifteen French names, each a first name paired with a family name, such as "Capucine Lefebvre" or "Baptiste Moreau". The first names come from a list of 194 given names used in France, men's and women's mixed, and the surnames from a list of 160 of the most common French family names. Tick the box and the tool gives you surnames only, which is what most people searching for a French surname generator actually want. Every card has a copy button.

How the names are built

The tool does not store ready-made full names. It shuffles the first-name list and the surname list independently and pairs them up, so "Sylvie Garnier" and "Sylvie Dupont" are equally likely, and a batch of 15 never repeats a first name or a surname. There is no gender filter: Adrien, Amandine, Théo and Thérèse all sit in the same list, and unisex names like Camille and Dominique are in there too. If you need a specific gender, generate 10 or 15 and pick. Accented characters are preserved (Benoît, Céline, Bérénice, Zoé, Lefèvre), so copy-pasting into a document keeps the correct spelling.

What is in the lists

The 160 surnames follow the frequency ranking published by INSEE, France's statistics office. The top of the list is exactly what you would find in a French phone book: Martin (the most common surname in France by a wide margin), Bernard, Dubois, Thomas, Robert, Richard, Petit, Durand, Leroy and Moreau. Further down are names of immigrant origin that are now firmly French, such as Garcia, Martinez and Nguyen-style Iberian and Vietnamese surnames, reflecting the actual population.

The first names span classic mid-century names (Bernard, Brigitte, Chantal, Didier, Yvonne), names common among people born in the 1980s and 1990s (Sébastien, Céline, Stéphane, Virginie), and names that have been popular for recent births (Capucine, Tiphaine, Timothée, Zélie, Ulysse). That mix means a generated name might suit a retiree or a toddler; check the pairing against the character's age if that matters for your story.

French surnames and what they mean

Most French family names fall into four groups, and the list covers all of them:

• From a father's first name: Martin, Bernard, Thomas, Robert, Richard, Laurent, Michel, Vincent, André, François. This is the largest group.
• From a trade: Lefebvre and Lefèvre (smith), Mercier (merchant), Fournier (baker, from the oven), Bonnet (hat maker), Boucher (butcher), Meunier (miller).
• From a description: Petit (small), Legrand (the tall one), Leroy (the king, usually a nickname), Roux (red-haired), Moreau (dark-skinned or dark-haired), Blanc.
• From a place: Dubois (of the wood), Dupont (of the bridge), Dumont (of the hill), Fontaine (spring), Lambert and Garnier are Germanic in origin and go back to the Frankish period.

In France, surnames are written in capitals on official documents (DUPONT Marie), children traditionally take the father's surname, though since 2005 parents can choose either or both, and women keep their birth name legally after marriage even if they use their spouse's socially.

Ways to use it

• Characters for fiction. A novel set in Lyon needs a cast whose names don't all sound like Jean-Pierre Dupont. Generate 15, keep the five that fit.
• Test data for French-language apps. Names with diacritics are a good check that your database, forms and PDFs handle UTF-8 properly. Pair them with the Random Last Name Generator if you also need non-French surnames in the same dataset.
• Language class. Assign each student a French name for the semester, with surnames only if they already have a first name they like.
• Roleplay and gaming. NPCs, aliases, or a Resistance-era character sheet.

For other European naming traditions, try the German Name Generator and Austrian Name Generator, or the Unisex Name Generator for names that work across genders. Everything in this group is listed under all name generators.