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Concept
French name
Summary
French names typically consist of one or multiple given names, and a surname. Usually one given name and the surname are used in a person's daily life, with the other given names used mainly in official documents. Middle names, in the English sense, do not exist. Initials are not used to represent second or further given names.
Traditionally, most French people were given names from the Roman Catholic calendar of saints. However, given names for French citizens from immigrant communities are often from their own culture, and in modern France it has become increasingly common to use first names of (international) English or other foreign origin. Almost all traditional given names are gender-specific. Females are often given names that are feminine forms of traditional masculine French names. The prevalence of given names follows trends, with some names being popular in some years, and some considered out-of-fashion. Compound given names are not uncommon. (The second part may be normally used by the opposite sex; the gender of the compound is determined by the first part.) First names are chosen by the child's parents. Nowadays, there are no legal a priori constraints on the choice of names, though this was not always the case as recently as a few decades ago. To change a given name, a request can be made before a court, but except in a few specific cases, one must prove a legitimate interest for the change.
In France, until 2005, children were required by law to take the surname of their father. If the father was unknown, the child was given the family name of the mother. Since 2005, parents can give their children the name of either their father, mother, or a hyphenation of both although no more than two names can be hyphenated. In cases of disagreement, both parents' family names are used and hyphenated in alphabetical order, with only one word, the first surname, taken from each parent (if one of them already has a hyphenated surname).
Official source
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Related concepts (3)
Germanic name
Germanic given names are traditionally dithematic; that is, they are formed from two elements, by joining a prefix and a suffix. For example, King Æþelred's name was derived from , for "noble", and , for "counsel". However, there are also names dating from an early time which seem to be monothematic, consisting only of a single element. These are sometimes explained as hypocorisms, short forms of originally dithematic names, but in many cases the etymology of the supposed original name cannot be recovered.
Surname
A surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person. Depending on culture, the surname may be placed at either the start of a person's name, or at the end. The number of surnames given to an individual also varies: in most cases it's just one, but in many Spanish-speaking countries, two surnames are used for legal purposes.
Letter case
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally majuscule) and smaller lowercase (or more formally minuscule) in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper- and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters: each in the majuscule set has a counterpart in the minuscule set. Some counterpart letters have the same shape, and differ only in size (e.g. {C,c} or {S,s}), but for others the shapes are different (e.