French names that start with the letter 'M'

Many French first names begin with the letter ‘M’. These include options like Marie, Marianne, Margot, and Marion (for girls), as well as options like Marcel, Maurice, and Maxime (for boys).

The popularity of ‘M’ as a first letter for names may not be entirely coincidental.

The letter ‘M’ represents a fundamental sound that babies learn to pronounce early on. That explains why, in many different languages, the word for “mom” starts with the letter ‘M’ (that word is “maman” in French).

French girl names that start with 'M'

Among French girl names that start with ‘M’, the most widely used is likely Marie (when I was in school in France, there were often two girls named Marie in the same classroom).

While Marie might be the most common of these names, the most quintessentially French is perhaps Marianne because it is the name of the personification of the French Republic.

Here is a list of French female names that begin with the letter ‘M’ (click on the names to hear an audio recording of their pronunciation):

As you can see, there are a lot of French girl names that begin with the letter ‘M.’ In our list of 500 French girl names, about 23% of them start with the letter ‘M.’ 

That is a lot, considering that if you pick a random letter from the alphabet, there would be about a 4% chance that that letter would be ‘M.’ 

Breton, a Celtic language from the western part of France, is the origin of a few French girl names that start with ‘M’, for instance: Maëlle, Maëlys, and Maiwenn.

Many compound first names start with “Marie”. Here are some of the most common ones:

Name
Marie-Christine
Marie-Thérèse
Marie-Claude
Marie-France
Marie-José
Marie-Hélène
Marie-Laure
Marie-Pierre
Marie-Claire
Marie-Françoise
Marie-Line
Marie-Louise
Marie-Paule
Marie-Noëlle
Marie-Jeanne
Marie-Ange
Marie-Odile
Marie-Madeleine
Marie-Chantal
Marie-Anne

French boy’s names that start with 'M'

Clicking on any of the following names will play an audio recording of its pronunciation.

French first names that begin with ‘M’ among historical figures and public personalities

Name Occupation
Marcel Proust French novelist who wrote “In Search of Lost Time”
Marie Curie French-Polish scientist who won two Nobel Prizes (one in Physics, the other in Chemistry)
Marcel Pagnol French writer who wrote the autobiographical novel “La Gloire de mon père”
Michel de Montaigne 16th-century French philosopher
Marguerite Duras 20th-century French novelist
Michel Houellebecq best-selling French author who wrote “Les Particules élémentaires”
Marcel Duchamp French artist
Michel Foucault French philosopher and historian
Matthieu Ricard well-known French Buddhist monk with a PhD in molecular genetics who has written many books
Marie-Antoinette Queen of France just before the French Revolution
Marcel Carné French film director
Maximilien Robespierre influential figure during the French Revolution
Marion Cotillard French actress
Michel Platini French soccer player
Maurice Ravel French composer whose best-known work is perhaps “Boléro.”
Mylène Farmer French-Canadian singer

French last names that start with 'M'

Below is a list of some of the most common French last names that start with the letter 'M':