Ln December 27, 2020, Mauricette M., 78, was the first French woman to be vaccinated against the coronavirus which has caused us so much misery for a year. Could anyone imagine a better name? Born at a time when Marie, Nicole, Monique and Françoise dominated the charts, she has a much rarer first name. But its ending is much less rare. With Josette, Claudette, Colette, Yvette, Bernadette, Ginette, Arlette, she formed a group which, at the time, appointed 20% of baby girls.
An ending with ephemeral success, and therefore significant: it was between 1910 and 1950 that a significant proportion of girls (more than 10%) received a first name in “-ette”. Hence the very strong generational character of these first names, confined to one generation. Other feminine endings followed one another: the first names in “-ine”, then in “-ie”, and finally in “-a”. Claudette, Claudine, Claudie and Claudia: like a reminder, the new ending brings a first name back to life.
Fancy
Many female first names are, even today, variations of male first names, to which endings have been added indicating, by difference, the gender. Joseph-Joséphine, Frédéric-Frédérique. And if there are feminine endings, identifiable by their share in births, there are none for boys.
The only equivalent would be the “-ien” of the 1980s (Sébastien, Fabien, Damien, Julien…), but without being part of a succession. We could have had Jules, Julic, Julian, Julien, Julo… but that didn’t happen. The masculine is just nothing at the end of the first name. Anything goes, as long as it’s not a feminine ending.
This tendency towards specialization has not disappeared, far from it. While we could have imagined a growing indistinction of endings, we note, in fact, that nearly one in two girls today receives a first name in “-a”. Definitive structural change, the “-a” forever indicating femininity, or a fad? I am fond of fashion: the Mélina of today will most likely be the Mauricette of today tomorrow.
Baptiste Coulmont is professor of sociology at the Ecole normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, author of Sociology of first names (La Découverte, 2014, 130 p., 10 €) and, with Pierre Mercklé, from Why supermodels don’t smile. Sociological chronicles (Presses des Mines, 2020, 184 p., € 29).
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