Help French boys name!

[wildswimmer20]

Pregnant with no. 2, hubbie is French but we live in the UK. 1st child has an unusual Celtic name and this time would like to choose a French name but struggling! Needs to be fairly easy to say/spell in both languages. Wouldn’t probably go for a very traditional French name.

Top choice at the moment is Artus, like the nicknames Art and Artie. Would be pronounced quite differently in French and English, does it sound ok in English?

Other options -
Léon
Sylvain
Mathis / Matisse
Malo

Open to suggestion!

American /French family here.
I recommend : Gaspard, Edouard, Remi, Vincent, Victor, Pascal, Maxime, Sébastien, Hubert, George, Charles, Albert, Martin, Henry.....

Rafael
Elio
Joseph
Thomas
Baptiste
Axel
Adam
Enzo
Eliott
Tiago
Oscar
Adrien
Gabriel

Sacha

I love Benoit

British/French family here, I'm the French one.

Which names are now in your shortlist?

@mathanxiety list is spot on. Current, not faddy, and not dated.

I would recommend the exact same names (I have a crush on Elio). You also can't go wrong with @Whataretalkingabout list.

My shortlist would be:

Classic but not dated:
Charles
Arthur
Thomas
Joseph (he will probs always be Joe though in the UK)
Baptiste (love it, made moe known through the BBC series Baptiste, so people would know how to pronounce it).

Cool and current:
Gabriel
Raphael
Oscar
Elio

Also love love Maximilien, NN Max, if I have a DS will use this. Or pick an English one and use Ivo.

Oh and not sure about the pronunciation but Yvan I find gorgeous.

Good luck!

I love Ivo. Not very French though. The French version is Yves but I don't think that would pass the generation test?!

Er, I did. Not saying which one, but I will tell you that my grandmother said 'Why did you want to choose such an old-fashioned name?' I said 'because we like it'. DP and I don't much like 'fashionable' or 'cool' names. For one thing, they date. We especially don't like the fashion for first names that are surnames, like Brandon for example. I read recently that one of the most popular boy's names in France about 20 years ago was 'Kevin', and it now has roughly the same ring in French ears as Wayne and Waynetta.

Wayne, Waynetta, and - sorry - but also Gary, Brian, Linda, and Stacey.

They're few and far between because they're dated. They were once the height of cool.

Sebastien
Pierre
Martin
Benoit
Kevin 😉

I don't think it matters if the name is from the 'wrong generation' if your child is growing up in the UK. I'm half French and my name is very unusual for my generation in France but was just unusual in the UK.

Please don't use "Manu" until at least the end of Macrons mandate! I'm a fan of macron to be honest but I think he's going to go down as one of the most hated presidents in French history and if you're future son ever tried to start a career in France and people worked out he'd been named Manu during macrons mandate I don't think it would play in his favor.

your*

Manu Chao has been a big favourite musician in our house for years. Why are people so obsessed with 'fashion'??? In any case Manu is just a diminutive of (in his case 'Pierre-Manuel'. Like 'Gilou' for Gilles, 'Philu' for Phillippe, etc. It would be like officially calling a kid 'Ken' instead of 'Kenneth', or 'Jim' instead of 'James'. I do note that this shortening on the birth cert seems to be quite popular these days. I will note that we gave one of our daughters 'Betty' as a middle name, and the registrar said 'Do you mean Elizabeth'?.

I hated Sarko more, and still do.

@CharlottenBerg , I like Manu Chao too.

Why are people so obsessed with 'fashion'???
Because they don't want their daughter to be the equivalent of Beryl in a class full of Lilys and Evies

Are conformity and hive-mindedness such good things, really?

I think Beryl is due a comeback, but many parents don't want their child to not fit in.

I think some of the names suggested are sort of Darren or Gary names. Would you name your baby son Darren or Gary? Probably not - you'd choose something a bit fresher, and would probably pick a name that turned out to be more popular than you expected like Arlo or something.

I don't have anything against Darren or Gary, just know a lot of them.

Personally, I'm OK with 'old-fashioned' names e.g. the 12 apostles, saints, etc. You know, like George, John, Peter, Mary, Helen, Sarah, etc. DP and I were not keen on 'modern' names. Our kids have not suffered at all, not even Patrick ('Pat' to his mates).

But you're right, not Darren or Gary (where did Gareth vanish to?).

@CharlottenBerg , Me too. I prefer the sort of names in your list to the currently popular names.

I think Darren and Gary are nice names but they fell out of fashion, probably because they were overused. I know an awful lot of Gareths and they're all about 60.

@CharlottenBerg , I've thought of one. I work with an Ian who is about 30. The name makes me think of someone about 60.

I agree about Manu, I know a few and we haven't stopped calling them that with the advent of Macron, to be honest, it's not even a name I associate with him. I don't particularly like the name myself, but the president isn't a reason not to use it if you love it.

Maël
Eden
Mattéo

To me, Gary is the shortened form of Gareth, and to call a child that would be as inappropriate as calling him 'Jim' or 'Bill', but I know people do that sort of thing nowadays.

@CharlottenBerg , the two names have different origins. I think they fitted the fashion for names in the mid 20th century (Darren, Karen, Sharon, Aaron, Gary, Barry, Terry, Kerry, ...)

I love Thibault x