France
loc · Latin script
Meaning: “French person”; originally referred to someone from northern France
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
France is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 7.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 6.3K
- SISlovenia1 in 7.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 315 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
“French person”; originally referred to someone from northern France.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
France counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | ≈9,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | 28K | France | 315 |
| CA Canada | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | 1 | France | 156 |
| US United States | 2,043 | 1 in 163K | 12K | France | 157 |
| BE Belgium | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 9.5K | 258 | — | 75 |
| BR Brazil | 1,052 | 1 in 201K | 1.1K | — | 1 |
| SI Slovenia | 265 | 1 in 7.9K | 268 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 55K | 8 | — | 31 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
France is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, From Latin Francia, the name of the Franks’ land; used as a modern given name.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
,2 Mainly U.S.: short form of Francis or FRANCIS Frances or bestowed with reference to the country.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In French, France (a country located primarily in Western Europe)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Origine latine, de « France »; forme rare de Françoise, lié au peuple franc/français.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Du latin Francus, « franc, libre »; forme féminine nationale.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Christine of Franceb. 1606FRDuchess of Savoy (1606-1663)
- France Prešerenb. 1800SISlovene national poet, a Carniolan Romantic poet of Slovene descent (1800–1849)
- Françoise Giroudb. 1916FRnot in their usual nameFrench writer and politician (1916–2003)
- Yusuf al-Qaradawib. 1926QAnot in their usual nameEgyptian Islamic theologian based in Doha, Qatar (1926-2022)
- France-Albert Renéb. 1935SCPresident of Seychelles (1935-2019)
- France Nuyenb. 1939FRFrench actress
- Anne Wiazemskyb. 1947FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress and novelist (1947–2017)
- Marie-Anne Chazelb. 1951FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress and screenwriter
- Michael Franceb. 1962USscreenwriter (1962–2013)
- Youssouf Sabalyb. 1993FRnot in their usual nameSenegalese and French footballer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 80 sources across 43 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 28K | #1,051 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #3,005 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,778 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,093 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 1968 | 1.8K | #795 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #7,468 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1.1K | #8,513 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.1K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 676 | #8,006 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 376 | #8,006 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 356 | #7,468 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 268 | #859 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name France mean, and where does it come from?
- “French person”; originally referred to someone from northern France. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does France have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.0 thousand people named France in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled france.
- How common is the name France?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,043 people named France in 2020, about 1 in 163 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about France?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/franceThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “France”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.