Any name ideas for a english baby living in France.....?

[mozhe]

Ok it's not ' needed ' until october but the debate has already started....we know it's a boy, we want a name that will sound good in french and english...and we're fresh out of ' favourites ' as we already have 3 DSs and they each have x3 names each...We have a short,( english ), surname and our other children all have fairly traditional if slightly old fashioned names...Can't bear the baby name books as just too much choice !

spelt with an X the 'Havi;' i know

Sauce - Kevin , Keveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen is hot here in France. Apparently it's Breton.....

I love the name Xavier, but that might have something to do with a gorgeous blond, tanned skiing instructor when I was 16.

Ralph was the name given to a todger in Judy Blume's Forever.

Wellington?

Prehaps not

I loved Bartholemew/Bartolemy and also Augustin when we had to think of names. My dh vetoed both - apparently Bartolemy is the French version of Herod (massive slaughter of all heretics and the rivers ran red etc etc) and Augustin was a particularly seedy chap in the Marquis de Sade novels......

That's a pity... my sister's children have an adorable little cousin called Augustin, and another one called Basile - sounds lovely in French, not so sure that you can survive being Basil (Brush, Fawlty) in England...

Cuthbert.

Yes, that's it: Keveeeeeeen! Awful. Parents have no conection with Bretagne - one's born in Rome, the other in Tehran.

Our neighbors' boys are called Loïc (def Breton) and Aurélien.

The people who sold our house to us called their ds Callou.

My best friend is Wendi with an i (obviously ). When her father went to register her birth (this is 30 years ago, so not so many unusual names about) the registrar said they would ruin her life with such a strange spelling and why couldn't they choose a 'nice name like Jane'. Slight over reaction methinks!

No offence to the all the Janes in da house, obviously

Kevin - yup, just as nasty in French as in English... Quite like Aurélien. Maybe I've got a thing for boys' names beginning in Au-?
When choosing my daughter's names I had a thing about them beginning in Fl- or El-.

mmm - yes Anna. I like Eléonore.

Eléonore is very pretty. Unfortunately it's one of the names my partner and his ex-wife had shortlisted a few years previously, if they had had a girl (they didn't) so I didn't feel like using it...

Ellis sounds lovely in French

who's that starting with the girls names, its a boy!

Wouldn't it be pronounced like "Hélice"?

I quite like the French girl's name Flore. But it sounds like "floor" or "fluor(ide)" in English...

What about Mark, Luke, Oliver? We named our girls that sound english but have french spellings cos we liked it.

Yes it sounds like Elice, they dont sound their H's.

Re Keveeeeeen, my (Breton) husband assures me it isn't Breton, it is just popular here for some reason. It's Kevin Costner's fault, apparently.

A French family we know went to live in England for a couple of years, and their unfortunate son was teased endlessly about having a girl's name - his name is Yves (pronounced Eve).

Frenchleave - oh dear, poor child... that illustrates my earlier point that you do really have to think hard about all cultural and linguistic implications of names if you want to move around the globe without putting any hurdles in your child's way.

I went to a baptism yesterday - boy was called Thaddée, which I think is a bit OTT and complicated for a half-French/half Korean-American child who currently lives in NY. And there was a half French/half Dutch baby called Théodora, who in addition had a complicated surname involving a particule and a saint. Not exactly passe-partout.

my name is marcella..born and brought up in liverpool..the french love it and have no probs with it..its an old irish name and can be shortened to stella/marcia/estell etc