Most Popular First Names in 2024: “The choice can be perceived as deeply personal, yet many parents will make the same choice.”

What will the names of babies in 2024 be? On July 9, the French National Institute of Statistics (INSEE) unveiled the list of the most popular first names in France last year. Louise, Jade, and Ambre took the top spots for girls; Gabriel, Raphaël, and Louis for boys. The Institute of Statistics also broke down this ranking by region, but, with a few exceptions, the same first names recur across France.

Baptiste Coulmont, professor of sociology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, talks to "Libé" about what lies behind parents' choices.

How can we explain this uniformity in France?

There is already a significant bias: the most given first names correspond to a minority, a third of births for the first 50. To reach the top, they must have proven themselves and be appreciated by a large number of people. It is quite interesting, moreover: the choice of a first name can be perceived as deeply personal , yet many parents will make the same one. This clearly shows that there is something external to them. Because when we want to choose a first name, we look at those given the year before, we think about those that circulate in our entourage… The influences change, but not very much in the short term. Hence this stability across the whole territory and from one year to the next.

If you take Gabin, Noah, Elio, Liam, Maël [among the most popular in 2024, editor's note] , they are a consensus. But imagine twenty years ago, they would have been perceived as strange. Of course, first names will emerge, I'm thinking of Elio for example – a short name, which is preferred at the moment, with an o ending that is often found among boys. But we regularly talk about the return of old names… and this phenomenon is very common: we were already talking about it in the 1950s! We make something new out of something old, if the old is old enough. It doesn't work with Christophe and Christian, which are old names that are too recent and therefore sound old-fashioned. But for Léon, Jules or Marceau, yes. This uniformity is therefore not new. We even notice a little more variety in first names today than before – something this ranking cannot show.

Is there a greater search for originality today?

The variety increased from the Second World War, but especially from 1993: it was from this date that there was no longer any a priori control by the civil registrar , so parents are freer in the choice of first name and the way of writing it. But different first names are not necessarily a desire for originality. It is mainly linked to the fact that today we call each other by our first name in all circumstances of social life, it has taken on the function that the surname had forty or fifty years ago. So the fact of choosing a rarer first name also allows it to be sufficient in itself to distinguish a person.

Do national or global events or pop culture have a significant influence?

There are effects from TV series, film actors, video game characters... A first name can be given 50 times a year, and one year it will be given 350 times because there was a song with that name in the title. But the effect is short-lived and not massive. After the 2018 World Cup victory, there were a few hundred additional Kylians born the following year, then it fell back. 500 additional first names, for example, is not ridiculous; the children who bear it are associated with this event, like the little Zinédines born in 1998, but it does not change the general structure. And it does not work with an entirely new first name, or one that would be considered too old - a film with a young person named Johnny is not going to revive this first name.

Isn't the first name also a form of social marking?

Of course. Consider a group of names like Oscar, Auguste, Charles, Ambroise, and whose social position would require determining, and we would lean more towards a list of polytechnicians. Social groups look at each other and may or may not wish to associate their child with a different group. If the first name refers to a group at the bottom of the social spectrum, it will be less popular with others. Thus, some acquire a connotation and become almost impossible to bear in certain circles. For example, the first names Julia, Alma, Alba would not have appealed to the majority in the 1950s, since they have a Mediterranean, northern Italian sound, which could evoke the image of the Italian worker. This is no longer the case today. Now we find the same thing with first names from North Africa. Even names with more fluid origins can have this connotation: Yanis was a Greek name, as soon as immigrants or descendants of immigrants from North Africa started taking it, the rest of the population stopped.

There's an interactive notion in the choice of first names, which this ranking barely reveals. Aside from a few specific territories, such as the Île-de-France region, for example, with Seine-Saint-Denis, which has the particularity of having a majority population at the local level, but a minority at the national level.

Does the lack of overall differences between regions reflect a fading of regional identity?

We actually see few differences between departments in the most commonly given first names. But regional identity isn't always marked by the first name. In Brittany, identity marking is largely expressed by naming one's son Ewen and one's daughter Gwenaëlle. But the trend for Breton names has fallen somewhat since the early 2000s. This doesn't mean there's less of a Breton identity; it probably stems from something else. In Alsace, even if some people will continue to speak Alsatian on a daily basis, the first name in the civil registry has a classic French spelling—it's the diminutives that can have Alsatian overtones. Local identity is also expressed through the accent, the cuisine, the facades of houses, and association memberships.

The INSEE's first name classification provides very little information (it could include occupation, parents' education level, surname, neighborhood, etc.). The analyses that can be drawn from it using this file alone are limited.