So, I needed a French guy’s name the other day. Nothing super important, just for a little story I was tinkering with. Didn’t want anything too common, you know? But also not something completely out there.
First thing I did, obviously, was just hitting up a search engine. Typed in something basic like “French male names”. Man, the lists that came back! Huge pages, loads of names. A lot were ones you hear all the time, like Jean or Michel or Pierre. Good names, solid names, but not quite what I was picturing for this character.
I realized I needed to get a bit more specific. So, I tried searching again, this time using phrases like “classic French boy names” and then “less common French names”. That started turning up some different results. Still a ton to sort through, though.
I grabbed a notepad – yeah, old school, I know, but it helps me think – and just started jotting down any name that caught my eye. Didn’t really filter much at this stage, just wrote them down as I scrolled through different sites. My list started getting pretty long pretty quickly.
Digging a Little Deeper
Then I thought, okay, what do these actually mean? Sometimes the meaning adds a bit of flavour, right? So, for the names I kinda liked, I did quick searches for their origins or meanings. Found some interesting stuff. Some names had cool historical connections, others just had nice meanings like “brave” or “guardian”. That helped me feel a bit more connected to some of them.
My list included names like:
- Thierry
- Pascal
- Rémy
- Antoine
- Lucien
- Émile
- Sébastien
There were loads more, but those were some that stuck out initially. Reading them aloud helped too. Some just sound better than others, don’t they? Or they fit the kind of vibe I was going for with the character.
It got a bit much after a while, staring at lists of names. I had to narrow it down. I started crossing off the ones that didn’t quite feel right after thinking about them for a bit, or the ones that were maybe a bit too hard to pronounce consistently (for me, anyway!). I wasn’t asking anyone else, just going with my gut feeling on these.
Settling on One (Sort Of)
In the end, I circled a few favourites on my notepad. Didn’t make a final, final decision for the story character right then, but I ended up with a solid short list. I felt like I’d actually done the work, you know? Went from a vague idea to having some really good options.
It was actually a pretty interesting little rabbit hole to go down. Took longer than I expected, just browsing and thinking about names. But yeah, that was my process. Just a lot of searching, scribbling, thinking, and talking to myself, basically. Got myself a nice list of French names for whenever I might need one again.
