Baby Name: Michel

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that, up until the 1960s, the citizens of France were forced to obey a restrictive baby name law that was enacted in 1803.

Why did that law exist?

In order to curb the very non-traditional baby naming practices that had evolved during the years of the French Revolution.

It all started in September of 1792, one day before the French National Convention abolished the monarchy. On that day, a decree was issued. The decree allowed the citizens of France to change their forenames quite easily — all they had to do was “make a simple formal declaration before the registrar of their local municipality.”

Many people took advantage of this decree and chose new names with a revolutionary flavor (i.e., names that referred to nature, to the new republican calendar,* to republican virtues, to republican heroes, or to antiquity).

And, of course, they started giving their children revolutionary names as well.

Examples of these names include…

Though it’s impossible to estimate just how many revolution-era babies got revolutionary names, the number seems to be well into the thousands, judging by statements like these:

• “[I]n the winter and spring of 1794 at least 60 per cent of children received revolutionary names in Marseilles, Montpellier, Nevers, and Rouen.”
• “[I]n Poitiers…only 62 of 593 babies born in the year II [1793-94] were named after saints in the ancien régime manner. Instead, they were given names reflecting the contrasting sources of political inspiration.”

About a decade later, however, all this creative naming came to an end.

Under Napoleon Bonaparte, the French government enacted a law that restricted French given names to “names used in various calendars” (that is, the names of Catholic saints) and “names of persons known from ancient history.” In essence, the law was meant to “put an end to citizens bearing absurd names that signified inanimate objects, forms of vegetation, membership of the animal kingdom and abstract concepts.”

….And this was the law that gave the Manrot-le Goarnic family so much difficulty when they tried to give their children Breton names a century and a half later.

*The French republican calendar, in use from 1793 to 1806, was a secular take on the Catholic Church’s calendar of saints. The months “were named after natural elements, while each day was named for a seed, tree, flower, fruit, animal, or tool.”

Sources:

• Cuen, Lucrezia. “French May Get a Choice in Babies’ Names.” ABC News 9 Feb. 2001.
• ‘Franchise’: Profit from Freedom – Merriam-Webster
• French Republican calendar – Wikipedia
• Hörsch, Nicoline. Republikanische Personennamen: Eine anthroponymische Studie zur Französischen Revolution. Tübingen, Germany: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1994.
• McPhee, Peter. The French Revolution, 1789-1799. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Munday, Roderick. “The girl they named Manhattan: the law of forenames in France and England.” Legal Studies 5.3 (1985): 331–344.
• Munro, Andre. “The 12 Months of the French Republican Calendar.” Britannica.com.
• Willis, Sam. The Glorious First of June: Fleet Battle in the Reign of Terror. New York: Quercus, 2011.