Classic names that work in French and English

[HPandbean]

DH and I are struggling to think of classic (but not dull) names to compliment our unusual surname. The other thing is we have immediate family in France and baby will spend time there so we’d like the name to work in French and English. Our current favourites are Alexander and Madeleine but we’d love some more ideas.

For a girl DH likes Anna and Sophie which are nice but...meh... they don’t excite me! We both like Sophia and Isobel/Isabella but they wouldn’t work for us as they’re being used by family and friends.

For boys, we are stuck! Help

Thank you x

Elodie, Simone, Ophelia (Ophélie)
Boys.. Henri , Philippe, Louis

Is Florence French?

Charlotte
Hugo

Stella
Alice
Rose
Eloise?
Lucie

Hugo
Luis
Arthur

Pronunciation will be totally different in each country of course, but you can't avoid that - in the end there are no names pronounced identically across languages. I found my kids changed the pronunciation to fit the language before they were old enough to even know they were doing it, while I use the English pronunciation of their names in both languages which has only occasionally caused minor feather ruffling with ransoms trying to tell me how to pronounce my own child's name...

Arthur is very different because of the th obviously.

Sebastien
Daniel
Benjamin
Leo

Clara
Josephine
Margot
Gabrielle

Alexander and Madeleine are lovely!

Ophelia, Aurelia, Ottilie, Evangeline, Alice, Ines, Lea, Emma, Lena/Lina, Lucy, Eloise,

Gabriel, Leo, Louis, Hugo, Lucas, Nathan/Nathaniel

Sorry I'm not very good with boys names, girls names are much easier for me 😂

How about Claude for a boy and Mathilde for a girl? Or Sebastien? Amélie?

Emma

Beatrice
Charlotte
Nathalie

Sebastian
Dominic
David

Clara

Camille

Elisabeth for a girl and Edward for a boy. Both easily transfer to French

Eliane.

Claude is used for girls & boys in France, often linked with another name such as in Marie Claude.

Charles works well in both languages.

Genevieve and Manon are French names that transfer well in English.

Miriam works in both languages.

Fleur is very pretty.

Amelie - I think you can get away with not using the accent if you want

Loads of names work beautifully in both!

Chloe
Violette
Émilie
Eloise
Anna
Lucie
Amandine
Élodie
Genevieve
Octavia
Sylvie
Flora

Michael
Oscar
Leo
Theo
Xavier (love this!)
Sebastian
George
Victor
Thomas
Louis
Olivier (love this so much more than Oliver!)

Isn't it Alexandre in French?

How about
Clara
Josephine
Estelle

Louis
Quentin
Nathan

Colette
Eleanor
Beatrice
Elsa
Elise
Adelaide
Annabel
Emily
Florence
Jasmine
Lois
Madeline
Rosalyn
Juliette
Vivienne

Oscar
Leo
Reuben
Henry
Noah
Max
Alexander
Thomas

Thanks everyone - there are lots we hadn’t considered.

We love Louis and Noah and I really like Élise, Manon, Fleur and Genevieve. Just have to convince DH!

Manon is one of my favs.

Maëlys
Capucine
Aurélie

Sebastian
Gabriel
Benjamin

We are a French/English couple too.
I assume it's your DH who is French?
DH and I each wrote a list separately, then compared lists and basically vetoed most of the names on each other's because they didn't work very well in our own language!
It is difficult to find names that work equally well but aren't completely vanilla and boring.
We ruled out all names with "th" because the pronunciation is so different. Also ruled out names which were difficult to spell / pronounce in either language. And (as we knew we were having a boy) any names which sounded like a girl's name (and we would have done the same with ruling out masculine names for a girl). For example we ruled out Daniel, even though it's lovely, because it sounds like "Danielle" in French.

Some suggestions for you...

Boys:
Noah - I think this is one of the few names which is actually pronounced the same in both languages. It is very popular in the UK atm though (not that it should bother you if you love it)
Max - I like the full name Maxime in French (although it does sound a bit like the girl's name Maxine - you could mitigate that by spelling it Maxim)
Leo - although it's Lee-oh in English and Lay-o in French
Robin - also pronounced differently but not too much so
Toby (DH vetoed this as he doesn't like it in a French accent, but I still like it and think it works)

Girls:
Alice
Anna
Emma
Florence
Margot

PS a lot of the names suggested here are too French IMO. I love French names but as we live in the UK I didn't want something that most English speakers would massacre (sorry but they would!)

I love Simone though. Simone de Beauvoir and Nina Simone!