What name forms were used by both men and women in 14th-16th C France?

That’s a question we recently received, so we thought we’d devote a post to answering it!

When French developed from Latin, it retained a gendered marking for the majority of its names — marking which is most obvious when looking at masculine/feminine pairs of names. In Old French, the most common way of feminizing a name was simply adding an -e to the end, but in Middle French, especially by the early 15th C, it became more common to duplicate the final consonant and then add -e.

Some names, however, (particularly ones that already ended in -e!), were used in the same form by both men and women. Here are some examples:

Claude was used in this form by both men and women in France in the 16th C.

While the more common masculine form of the name was Dennis, both Denise and Denyse were used by both men and women at the end of the 13th C.

Gile, which can be a form of Giles or sometimes Gilo, is also the Old French vernacular form of the feminine form of both names, found in the early 14th C.

A bit of a rarity, but Guillaume was used by both men and women in the early 14th C.

Laurence was the usual Middle French vernacular for both men and women in the 16th C.

While Marin was almost exclusively masculine in the 16th C (and the expected Middle French feminine form would be Marine), we have one lone example of Marin used by a woman.

Phelippe, Phlippes, and Phlippe were all used by both men and women; the first form is an Old French one found in the early 14th C, while the latter two are 16th C Middle French forms.

Finally, Robert. Diminutive forms such as Robine and Robinette were much more commonly used by women, but Robert itself was used, albeit rarely, by both men and women.

So, there you are! These are the names we’ve found that were used in exactly the same spelling by both men and women in Old and Middle French.

An onomastic calendar: July

• July 1: Feast day of Saint Aaron.
• July 2: Elizabeth Tudor was born in 1492.
• July 3: Hugh Capet was crowned king of the Franks in 987.
• July 4: Saint Ulrich of Augsburg died in 974.
• July 5: Joan of the Tower, queen consort of Scotland, was born in 1321.
• July 6: Richard the Lion-Heart ascended the throne of England in 1189.
• July 7: Madeleine of Valois died in 1537.
• July 8: Saint Grimbald died in 903.
• July 9: Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg was born in 1511.
• July 10: Emperor Hadrian died in 138.
• July 11: Martin Frobisher sights Greenland in 1576.
• July 12: Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle is printed in 1493.
• July 13: Alexander III is crowned king of the Scots.
• July 14: Louis VIII became king of France in 1223.
• July 15: Saint Bonaventure died in 1274.
• July 16: Saint Clare of Assisi was born in 1194.
• July 17: Count Baldwin VI of Flanders died in 1070.
• July 18: Godfrey de Bouillon, crusader knight, died in 1100.
• July 19: Philipa of Lancaster died in 1415.
• July 20: Claude, queen of France, died in 1524.
• July 21: Feast day of Saint Victor of Marseilles.
• July 22: William Wallace is defeated at the Battle of Falkirk.
• July 23: Saint Bridget of Sweden died in 1373.
• July 24: Mathilda of Tuscany died in 1115.
• July 25: Casimir I the Restorer was born in 1016.
• July 26: Pope Celestine died in 432.
• July 27: Conrad II of Italy died in 1101.
• July 28: Rodrigo de Bastedas, conquistador and explorer, died in 1527.
• July 29: Olaf II of Norway died in 1030.
• July 30: Italian painter Giorgio Vasari was born in 1511.
• July 31: Ignatius of Loyola died in 1556.