It all started with a bet, an evening of passionate debate between two philosophy students. “We made a list of the things that determine us in life, and those that we can change: the color of the hair, the face, the gestures… And the first name? » The two friends inquire: the first name too. Decision is made. The next day, they will change their first name. One will become the author, musician and dancer Blandine Rinkel, taking up the third of her first names. The other will not go to the end of the “game”.
To reinvent oneself, to extract oneself from an environment, to get rid of one’s origins, is this what the change of first name offers? Singer Johnny Hallyday, writer Edouard Louis, actresses Anouk Aimée and Mathilda May took on an identity that corresponded to the codes of the world they were joining, but not all of them could register it in the civil registry. “Johnny Hallyday had tried, but he died Jean-Philippe Smet”, says sociologist Baptiste Coulmont, a specialist in first names. This is what is engraved on his tomb, in Saint-Barthélemy.
In France, any person can ask to add, delete or modify the order of their first names if this request presents “a legitimate interest”: ridiculous sounding, first name of use, francization or defrancization, professional identity. “The first name has long been considered an accessory used to differentiate individuals within the same family”, explains Baptiste Coulmont. He estimates between 6,000 and 9,000 the number of first name changes per year, compared to 2,800 before the law of 2016, which transferred to civil status officers this competence of the family court judge. Nearly three times more, the accompaniment by a lawyer being no longer necessary.
“The first name is in the soft identity, we say to the Ministry of Justice. It is not the mark of who you are in your ancestry, origin and identification. » A difference in weight with the surname, which has long justified the administrative distinction between the procedure for changing the name, so far long and complex, and that of changing the first name, which is easier.
Ambivalent approach
“It’s good, Blandine, it looks like you”observes her student friend in The Secret Name of Things, second novel by Blandine Rinkel, published by Fayard in 2019. World, the writer explains: “It was a candid gesture but he had very deep reasons. It resonated with a class complex. » Coming from the middle class, arriving from the suburbs of Nantes in Paris, propelled into a socio-cultural universe whose codes she did not master, the young woman sensed what was at stake: “That name was going to match anything I could create. » History will prove him right: “I feel, alas, that it gives legitimacy to my choice to write. » More than the first name would have had, “which reinforced the feeling that[elle avait] to be perceived as a sexy blonde who is not taken seriously”.
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