French names that start with the letter 'A'
There are plenty of beautiful French girl names that start with the letter ‘a’, for example: Amandine, Aurélie, Ariane, and Adèle.
French boy names that start with the letter ‘a’ can be quite charming and elegant as well. Some examples are Antoine, Arnaud, and Alain.
French girl names that start with a
- Amélie: The name “Amélie” appears in French popular culture as the title of a French movie that features a character named Amélie Poulain.
- Aurélie: The origin of the French name Aurélie can be traced back to the Latin word “aureolus” which literally means “made of gold” and figuratively means “splendid” and “magnificent”.
- Andrée
- Anne
- Anaïs: This French name has two dots placed over the vowel ‘i’. This indicates that the two adjacent vowels are pronounced separately, rather than being merged together as a diphthong.
- Annick
- Amandine: The French name “Amandine” resembles the word “amande,” meaning “almond”. But its origin is from the Latin word “amans” which translates to “loving”.
- Anne-Marie
- Agnès
- Alice
- Aurore: In addition to being a girl's name, the French word “aurore” refers to the radiant glow that appears in the sky before the sun rises above the horizon.
- Ambre
- Arlette
- Adeline
- Aline
- Angèle
- Agathe
- Antoinette
- Augustine
- Adèle: The French name Adèle has connections to French popular culture as it appears in the movie “La Vie d'Adèle” (English: “Blue Is the Warmest Color”)
- Anne-Sophie
- Aude: In French, “Aude” is both a girl’s name and the name of a geographical area (the Aude department) located in the south of France. Interestingly, it sounds the same as the word “ode,” which refers to a type of lyrical poem.
- Axelle
- Adrienne
- Annette
- Alizée
- Anne-Laure
- Albertine: The name Albertine has literary connections: Albertine Simonet is a character in Marcel Proust's novel “In Search of Lost Time” (French: “À la recherche du temps perdu”).
- Apolline: Apolline is a beautiful-sounding French girl’s name. It resembles the name of the handsome god Apollo in Greek and Roman mythology.
- Angélique: This French female name has an angelic feeling to it. In fact, the lowercase version of this name, “angélique” is a French adjective that translates to “angelic”.
- Albane
- Armelle
- Annabelle
- Anaëlle
- Alexandrine
- Armande
- Auriane
- Anne-Charlotte
- Anne-Claire
- Aliénor
- Annaelle
- Ariane: The name Ariane is the French spelling of the Greek mythological character Ariadne, who is famous for helping Theseus navigate the Labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur, by providing him with a thread (known as Ariadne's thread) to guide his way. In France, “Ariane” is also the name of rockets, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) that launch satellites into space.
- Alberte
- Angeline
- Anne-Cécile
- Armandine
French boy names that start with a
- Alain
- André
- Anthony
- Alexandre: Alexandre Dumas, a prolific French writer, is renowned for classics like “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
- Antoine
- Albert: Albert Camus, an influential French philosopher and writer, explored existential philosophy in some of his novels, such as “The Stranger” and “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
- Arnaud
- Alexis: A famous person with this name is Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th-century French political thinker, and author of “Democracy in America,” a work on the nature of democracy and its challenges.
- Adrien
- Arthur
- Aurélien
- Axel
- Auguste: A famous artist with this name is the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, known worldwide for his iconic masterpiece “The Thinker.”
- Alfred: Perhaps the most famous individuals with this name are Alfred Hitchcock and Alfred Nobel who are not French. But the name Alfred has been in use in France for a very long time. For example, Alfred de Musset is a 19th-century French poet and novelist.
- Augustin
- Alphonse: The French name Alphonse comes from the Spanish name Alfonso (which was carried by many Spanish kings).
- Armand
- Antonin
- Aymeric
- Amaury
- Achille
- Alban
- Antony
- Arsène: In French culture, the name “Arsène” is related to Arsène Lupin, a fictional gentleman thief created by French writer Maurice Leblanc.
- Ambroise
- Aristide
- Adrian
The importance of the letter ‘a’ in French and other languages
The letter ‘a’ is very special. And not just because it is the first letter of the alphabet. It is special because of the sound that it represents.
The letter 'a' represents a very simple and easy sound to make. You don't need to move your tongue, lips, or teeth in complex ways to say it. That's why 'a' is often the first vowel sound that babies learn to say.
The first words that French children learn contain the letter ‘a’: “maman” (mommy) and “papa” (daddy).
Linguist Roman Jakobson explored why many unrelated languages have terms similar to “mama” and “papa”. Jakobson proposed that these terms weren't inherited from an ancient human language, as commonly believed, but were rather independently reinvented by each child as they embarked on their journey of exploring phonetic possibilities.
The 'a' sound has a central role in other scripts as well. In the Devanagari script used for Sanskrit, Hindi, and Nepali, 'a' is the default vowel. Each consonant inherently represents a syllable with the 'a' sound. Additional marks can be added to the character to change the default vowel from ‘a’ to another vowel like ‘o’, ‘u’, and so on.
Many deep French vocabulary words start with the letter ‘a’. For instance, the French word for “love” is “amour” which starts with the letter ‘a’, and so does the French word for “soul” which is “âme”.
In the same way, names that start with the letter ‘a’ have a fundamental phonetic quality to them.
French last names that start with a
- André
- Aubert
- Aubry
- Antoine
- Alègre
- Auteuil
- Arnaud
- Aubin