Ettienne

[WhyCantIuseTheNameIWant]

Love it?
Hate it?
What names would you expect his siblings to have?
Heard it the other day in the playground. Decided I loved it.

[reuset]

Very popular, for boys. You could have Etiennette for girls but it's probably considered on the old fashioned side for mainstream use at the moment. I'd think an Etiennette would be 40+

I think it's one of those names that doesn't work well outside country of origin, especially if you have no French connections. You can do as you please of course. but people might think pretentious.

[BertrandRussell]

I hate the use of -ette to make a boy's name into a girl's because it's a diminutive. Not Female Etienne, but Little Etienne.

[Zakken]

The French name website is interesting, as it shows frequency of use from 1900 to 2009. The maximum per year for Etienne as a boy's name is given as 1,180. As a girl's name - it's 13, and none since 1966!

[PattyPenguin]

You'll note that Etienne drops out of fashion in the 60s. I think that's because people started using Stéphane instead, although that name has become decreasingly popular. Rather as they started using Francis or Franck more often than François but then those names too have rather fallen out of fashion.

[villainousbroodmare]

I love it but then I know an utterly gorgeous (French) Etienne.

[Iliveinalighthousewiththeghost]

How is it pronounced.

[WhyCantIuseTheNameIWant]

I would spell it etienne, as stated earlier.
I am not based in France, but do have family there. We do visit! We are mostly uk.
If I was lucky enough to have a ds to give this name to, his big brother has a welsh name, and big sister has a Hebrew name.

[KenDoddsDadsDog]

I love it ! Was a if fan of St Etienne back in the day .

[CrystalMcPistol]

The band or the team?

[KenDoddsDadsDog]

The band but I had a green St Etienne retro football top for some reason .

[Asleeponasunbeam]

KenDodds, are you me? I had a football top too. And LOVE the band (still).

I love the name. Was completely obsessed with a floppy fringed Etienne at school. He cultivated such an aura of cool (smug git!)

[springbabydays]

I love it and I knew it was a boy's name.

Mitzy that's a big generalisation. My name is French and it works perfectly well in the UK.

[Mygardenistoobig]

I really like it.

[pickwickcrocus]

I love it. I would have loved it for ds but dh didn't like it sadly. I know one Etienne and his brother is called Jude, which I also love very much but couldn't use for other reasons!

[JinglyJanglyJungleBigGameTours]

Absolutely love it, if I could persuade DH we'd have one ourselves.

[SwedishEdith]

I love this name. It was on my list of names I'd never get to use Someone did assume it was a girl's name before I explained it wasn't. I don't think it's too hard to pronounce either

[Ludways]

Fanjo, Etienne Stott is the gold medalist. We met him at the games and my kids have held his medal. We love him in our house. Lol

I like the name but not so much actually out of France.

[NinjaLeprechaun]

"The old form of the name is Estienne, the s has disappeared over time."
That's interesting - in Canada Etienne is (sometimes?) pronounced Etsienne. There is a tendency in some Canadian French dialects to swap letter sounds (for instance, je is sometimes said as ej). I wonder if this (the pronunciation of Etienne) is an example of an archaism.

I love the name, with either pronunciation, incidentally.

[rubyinthedust]

Ninja - French Canadians put s's after t's if the following letter is an i or a u. Pre-French Revolution pronunciation quirk that we've retained, nothing to do with swapping letters around.

That said, Etienne is a boy's name, only has one t, and Etiennette sounds incredibly archaic - from 4-5 generations ago, when it was fashionable to make up female names based on male names - Paulette, Georgette, etc.

Somebody asked - Etienne should be pronounced ett-yen.

[NinjaLeprechaun]

"Ninja - French Canadians put s's after t's if the following letter is an i or a u. Pre-French Revolution pronunciation quirk that we've retained, nothing to do with swapping letters around."
Thanks Ruby. So it is an archaism, just not in the way I had parsed it.

(I'm fascinated by dialects, and have sometimes run across French examples in my study of them, but I've only retained about a dozen words of French, and an equal amount of grammar, from 3 long-ago years of school French. Which does make it slightly harder to convert specific details into practical terms.)

[AvaCrowder]

I like it. Siblings called Claude et Nana. Surname Lantier/ Copeau

[GreatAuntDinah]

Nana is a brand of ST in France'

[Candycoco]

Love it

[Bellejournee]

Love it! I know a Nathaniel Etienne - not French in the slightest either.