French girls names

[sarah30000]

We want to honour a family member who is french but we don't like their names! We thought maybe we can choose a nice French girls name instead. It needs to be one syllable, or at most a very short two. I've looked at various lists but nothing is jumping out at me. Any suggestions? Preferably not ending in A. Thank you!

Celeste
Amelie
Chloé
Manon

Morgan (but with French pronunciation).

Claudine
Annique
The little daughter of a French mother I know is Sascha but I'm not sure how the feminine form is spelt.
Others I know are Dominique, Corinne, Lise and Fabienne but some may be too long for you.

Babette
Collette
Anouk
Mireille
Maeva
Joelle

Margot
Marie
Juliet
Gabrielle
Genevieve
Danielle
Celeste
Claire
Corinne
Blanche
Amelie

Barbe? Verity? That’s not French! And Coco is a name you would give to a parrot ! Yes I know Coco Chanel , but that was a nickname.
Eloise is usually spelt with an H and a ï, so Héloïse, the combination of an é with accent, the H and the ï would be an administrative nightmare.
Please run your choices through the French MNetters first!!
Dominique is a name for both girls and boys , Camille also but I find Camille for girls beautiful. Inès is very French and Inès de la Fressange is an icon of style !!

Aude does not mean dawn. That's "aube" (which isn't a name)

Anais is pronounced "An-eye-ees"

Anàe is not a name in French, or any language. It is a random set of letters stuck together. Vienne means “come” in French. Barbe means “beard”.
Marie
Nicole
Louise
Claire

If you like Coco, call her Colette, which you can then cut to coco without her having a name that means coconut in French ( noix de coco, huile de coco, ...) . Colette is also the name of a very famous French author, highly regarded.

You will find people in France or elsewhere giving a “ name “ to a child that is not a name, and the same happens in English with celebrities giving “ names “ such as North to a child. This doesn’t mean it is actually a name.

In the same way, people sometimes inverts syllables to make a name sound more original but it sounds so wrong in French. It is , I believe , more common to do so in the English language.

Snail
Baguette
Cheese
Patrica
Frog legs

Chantal
Mathilde
Francine
Madeleine
Virginie
Anna
Clothilde
Camille
Francoise
Celine
Celeste

Vienne means “come” in French.

It’s also a river in SW France and the French version of Vienna.

Yes, fair enough, Tatiana, but would it ever be used in France as a name for a girl?

Audrey?

Yes, the majority of these names are French, but they’re also not particularly current for the majority, too.
My daughter’s name has been mentioned above - Charlotte; it’s lovely both in French and in English.
A friend recently called her daughter Constance, which I thought was sweet. I also love Alice or Alice, but it didn’t go with our surname!

Ah, autocorrect changed my ‘Alix’ to a second ‘Alice’ 😆

I was agreeing with you Daisy it’s not girl’s name.

Beatrice has French origins I believe

Please do not call your child ‘Beard’.

And honestly, if she’s going to grow up in the UK, most people’s French pronunciation is poor, and anything you want to pronounce with a nasalised French ‘r’ or a terminal sound like the last syllable of ‘Manon’ or ‘Marion’ will be horrible.

And I would hesitate to use names pronounced differently in French and English, like Prudence, Camille or Constance. Unless you’re happy to go with the English pronunciation.

Currently living in France and most of the above names, whilst lovely, are what women aged 40 and above are called. In my daughter's class there are:

Manon
Marion
Chloe
Emma
Lea
Elise
Eolia
Aurore
Shana
Sasha
Charlotte
Alesia
Angele
Matilde
Leana
Oceane
Ludivine
Lila
Eva
Loan
Louane
Maeva
Maelle
Ines

A bit longer but lovely:
Clotilde
Sidonie
Clementine
Noemie
Manon
Juliette

I'm not sure what the the correct way of anais is, my friend got the name from the perfume, which was her mothers favourite.
Anyway they say it as 'anay'

I used to worked at a school and knew 2 little anais's, both pronounced it this way too. So I guess a lot of people pronounce it incorrectly where I live!

Right or wrongly, I think its nice!

And Vienne they actually got from the film chocolat.
The character is actually called 'vianne'

I agree with graywall - I've posted a few times about using names from other languages often resulting in using a name that is dated.

Agree with Gallivespian about the pronunciation. It needs to look and sound ok in both languages.

Check the spelling. Sometimes suggested names are misspelt or just bonkers.

Barbe, even if not a French girl's name, would be a cracking middle name if your surname is Dwyer.

Amelie is my all time favourite French name xx

Magali
Could shorten to Maggie for two syllables
It's on my list