Victoire is one of these first names, like Pierre, Olivier, Madeleine, which are also common names. But Victoire is perhaps closer to first names-virtues, like Clémence or Honoré, than first names-things.
As a common name, these first names are likely to bring the person and the thing together. Olive tree photographed in a field of olive trees. Honoré receiving the Legion of Honor. Hope, born after so many difficulties. Moments when the first name finds its motivation, the natural correspondence between the word and the reality that the word designates.
This is what happens to the Victories, born May 8, 1945 or November 11, 1918. These Victories of Victory, you can find them. But the Victory of 1945 is not that of 1918. The Victory of 1918 comes after a series of battles on French soil, which is not fully liberated on November 11. A significant proportion of the girls who were born on November 11 then received Victoire, as a first or middle name. The 1945 Victory began when the Allies entered Germany several months and almost a year after the D-Day landings.
Without “motivation”
Liberation and victory were disconnected in 1945. And we can see it in the first names: if a not insignificant proportion of girls received Victoire on May 8 and 9, 1945, it was without comparison with 1918, perhaps because, in the in the mind of a part of the French, the victory was already acquired. In addition, in 1945, the first name is really old-fashioned. It must then ring in the ears of the French, as Huguette or Monique ring in our ears: there really should be a good reason to call the youngest child that way. The victory gave this reason, but without putting Victoire back on the upward curve.
It was not until the very end of the 1970s that Victoire, quite slowly, came back into fashion, The party (1980), by Claude Pinoteau, perhaps helping to revive. At the start of the 2020s, around 1,500 Victories were born each year. Victory without motivation : the parents are not celebrating the victory, they have chosen a “pretty name”.
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).