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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

When can you drop ‘monsieur, madame’ and use first names in France?

Many anglophones will find France more formal than they are used to, especially in matters of address, so we asked French language expert Camille Chevalier-Karfis how you know when it's time to get friendly.

Published: 17 August 2020 11:14 CEST
Updated: 4 May 2023 17:08 CEST
When can you drop 'monsieur, madame' and use first names in France?
When meeting someone for the first time in France, what should you call them? Photo: AFP

As well as the tu/vous minefield that French learners have to negotiate, if you spend time here you will also be faced with another dilemma – when is it OK to address people by their first name and when should you stick to addressing them as, for example, Monsieur de Gaulle or Madame Macron.

This isn’t a question that has a simple answer as it varies a lot depending on factors including your age, where in France you are and the social circles you move in.

READ ALSO French language dilemmas: When to drop the vous and get friendly

But following a question from a reader, we asked French language expert and Paris native Camille, founder of French Today, to give us some pointers on how to establish what you should call someone by their first name and when you should keep it formal.

Age

This is a big difference and levels of formality will vary depending on your age and the age of the person you are talking to.

Camille said: “If you’re an adult then you can address any child by their first name.

“Other than that if there’s an age gap of 20 years or more then you should probably address the older person as Monsieur or Madame unless they tell you otherwise.

“If you are the older person then it is up to you to give permission for your first name to be used.”

In general, as in most countries, people of an older generation are more likely to be formal than younger ones.

So while workplaces with a predominantly younger staff are likely to be first-name zones, in other workplaces older employees may prefer to keep the monsieur/madame, especially for people in senior positions.

Place

You will also find quite a contrast between the big cities and the small towns and villages of rural France, with people in the cities more likely to go informal.

Camille said: “As a general rule smaller places do tend to be more formal.

“There is also a class element and it tends to be the case – although there are a lot of exceptions – that people who are nobility or haute-bourgeoise will be more likely to stay formal for longer while rural or working class people tend to move more quickly to first name terms.

“Be careful with farmers though – don’t make assumptions about their class as some farmers are really more like local nobility and are quite well off.”

There’s also the place where you meet the person, if you are going for a formal meeting with the mayor or at your bank, it’s definitely better to use monsieur/madame to be on the safe side.

Just ask

Of course the major pointer is how people introduce themselves to you – if they introduce themselves by a first name you can safely assume they are happy to be called by it.

But in situations where you either didn’t get an introduction or you aren’t sure then it’s probably simpler to just ask.

Camille says: “French people will not expect you to know all the ins and outs of the French language and manners so there’s no harm in asking.”

Est-ce-que je peux t’appeler par ton prénom ? – Can I call you by your first name? 

Or a simpler and less formal Je peux t’appeler Camille ? – Can I call you Camille?

Or, if you aren’t yet on a tu-basis, you say:

Est-ce-que je peux vous appeler par votre prénom ? or Je peux vous appeler Camille ?

If you’re the one who is being addressed as monsieur or madame you can say Appelez-moi Camille or just gently correct them when they say madame: Camille, s’il vous plaît.

Or if you know the person quite well you can adopt a more light-hearted tone and say Arrêtes avec ta madame ! Appelle-moi Camille – Stop it with the Madame! Call me Camille.

Other options

The French language does also contain a couple of other options for addressing people, including one that can work as a sort of halfway house between formal and informal – Monsieur/Madame plus the person’s first name eg Monsieur Jacques or Madame Brigitte.

Camille says: “This is a lot more common in a rural setting but forms a nice little construction that shows respect but also friendliness and informality.  However, it’s not a formulation that someone who fancies him/herself has upper class would use.”

There is also the option to address people by their job title eg Monsieur le Professeur, Madame la Rédactrice-en-chef, Monsieur le Ministre. This is formal and an expression of respect.

Camille says: “If you were going to see a politician, for example, it would be appropriate to address them as Monsieur le Maire or Madame la Préfet or whatever their title is.

“There are also certain jobs in France that have their own method of address, for example lawyers are addressed as Maître (master, even if they are a woman).”

And finally if you’re a fan of political speeches you may have heard politicians referring to mes chers compatriotes or mes chers citoyens (my dear compatriots/fellow citizens) – unless you are actually the president of the republic it’s probably best to give this one a miss.  

Don’t read too much into it

And finally, don’t assume that using a first name or full name is an indication of whether the person likes you or not, it probably has just as much to do with them, their habits and the situation as it does how they feel about you.

Camille says: “I always called my cleaning lady Madame just because that was how we started off addressing each other.

“Now she is retired and we often meet for coffee because we have become friends but I still don’t use her first name – I think of her as Madame X now so that is how she will stay in my mind.

“It’s often just what you become used to and then it can be hard to change.”

Do you have a language question for Camille? Email us at news.france@thelocal.com and we’ll ask for her expert advice.

Camille Chevalier-Karfis is a French language expert, and founder of FrenchToday.com. 

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CULTURE

How many of France’s ’10 most iconic women’ can you name?

Ten monumental golden statues representing French women from the worlds of art, literature, sport and politics are shortly to go on display in Paris - but how many of these famous names do you recognise?

Published: 18 September 2024 15:34 CEST
How many of France's '10 most iconic women' can you name?

They were one of the early highlights of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, emerging from the River Seine near the Alexandre-III bridge as the flotilla of boats carrying international athletes passed.

Now golden status of the 10 famous women have been made and are on display in Cour d’honneur of the French National Assembly until October 5th, while more permanent homes for them are discussed. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo hopes to install them along rue de La Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement.

It will go some way towards closing that statuery gap – there are currently around 260 statues of men in the French capital, and just 40 women.

This temporary free exhibition will enable visitors to admire these polymer resin sculptures, created by 3D printing and designed to withstand the elements, by registering in advance on the Assemblée nationale website.

But, who are the women they celebrate and honour? Some might be familiar to international readers while others are barely known outside France.

Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) 

The oldest of the inspirational women remembered at the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony by some distance.

De Pizan was France’s first woman of letters, the first woman to earn a living as a writer. 

She started her career in the court of King Charles VI, following the deaths of her father and husband in rapid succession, leaving the family – she had three children – without a traditional source of income.

Her works were forgotten for several centuries, but resurfaced in the 1980s thanks to the rise of feminist studies – and, today, she is revered as one of history’s earliest feminists. Her most famous work, La cité des dames (The City of Ladies), clinically dismantles patriarchal discrimination and misogyny.

Jeanne Barret (1740-1807)

Explorer and botanist Barret was born into poverty in rural Burgundy – and went on to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, while working as a ‘valet’ to doctor and botanist Philibert Commerson. 

At the time, the French navy banned women from their vessels, so she had to undertake the journey around the world in disguise, and was known as Jean. Her tireless work – she took charge of an expedition in Brazil when Commerson was unfit to work – earned her the respect of the crew and the expedition’s captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.

She and Commerson kept her true identity – and their relationship – secret for a year. In fact, such was his respect for her that Bougainville, after whom the botanist had named a plant, later wrote to King Louis XVI and requested that she be honoured with the title femme extraordinaire.

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)

Playwright, activist, abolitionist, disheartened revolutionary – feminist icon de Gouges is best known for her  Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen), written in scathing response to the Revolutionary Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and demanding full legal, political and social assimilation of women.

She also wrote in favour of the abolition of slavery, and was initially in favour of the 1789 Revolution – but grew disenchanted by the lack of progress of women’s rights in its aftermath. 

De Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793, after writing repeated literary attacks on the regime and leader Maximilien Robespierre.

Louise Michel (1830-1905)

If ever you see anarchists raise a black flag during a protest, remember Louise Michel – the teacher, anarchist and leading light of the Paris Commune, a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris from 18th March to 28th May, 1871.

She was transported to Nouvelle-Caledonie in punishment for her role in the Commune. There, she took up the plight of the indigenous Kanak people, taking their side in a revolt in 1878. 

In 1880, amnesty was granted to those who had participated in the Paris Commune. Michel returned to Paris, her revolutionary passion undiminished. And she proudly waved a black flag at a jobless demonstration in Paris in March 1883 – it is, historians say, the first use of the modern anarchists’ symbol.

Alice Guy (1873-1968)

French cinema remembers the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis. It remembers the visionary Georges Méliès, and early directors Marcel Pagnol and Jean Renoir – the son of the artist. And it honours Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer. The list of male cineastes in France is long.

Alice Guy routinely gets lost in the shuffle. She shouldn’t. She was the first woman to direct a film – La Fée aux choux in 1896; one of the first to make a movie with a distinct narrative; and, for a decade between 1896 to 1906, was probably the only female filmmaker in the world.

Guy was a cinema pioneer in many ways. She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sync-sound system, colour-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. 

Her Hollywood film A Fool and His Money – made with a wholly African-American cast – is considered to have historical and aesthetic significance and is preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.

And her 1906 33-minute film La vie du Christ, which tells the story of Jesus Christ in 25 tableaux based on the gospels, is sometimes cited as the first ‘epic’ movie. As was the case with many Guy  films, it was for a long time wrongly attributed to Victorin Jasset – her assistant in charge of directing exterior scenes and managing the extras.

Alice Milliat (1884-1957)

There’s still a vast distance to travel, but women’s sport might not even be where it is today without Milliat. 

While noted misogynist Pierre de Coubertin – he once famously said that a woman’s role at the Olympic Games should be to crown the winners – gets all the Olympic glory, Milliat was responsible for getting the men-only club to, finally, allow women to compete.

She founded the Fédération Française Sportive Féminine in 1917. She helped organise the 1922 Women’s World Games – which were originally called the Jeux Olympiques Féminins and which ran for four editions until 1934, and which prompted the International Olympic Committee to slowly and belatedly allow female competition.

She also managed a French women’s association football team that toured the United Kingdom in 1920. In 2021, a commemorative statue of Milliat was unveiled at the French Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Paris.

Paulette Nardal (1896-1985)

Journalist, activist, woman of letters and pioneer of ‘black intellectualism’, Nardal, who was born in Martinique, was also the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne.

In October 1931, she founded the journal La Revue du Monde Noir (Review of the Black World) with her sisters; French novelist Louis Jean Finot; Haitian scholar Léo Sajous; and Clara W Shepard, an African-American teacher and translator. 

On her return to Martinique in 1944, Nardal founded Le Rassemblement féminin. Le Rassemblement féminin, one of two feminist organisations at the time whose goals were to increase the number of women who voted in the 1945 elections.

Then, from 1946 to 1948 Nardal was a delegate to the United Nations, working with both the UN Department for Non-Autonomous Territories and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

De Beauvoir’s 1949 work The Second Sex is considered a “trailblazing work in feminist philosophy”, and is a foundation work of modern feminism. 

But she considered herself a writer rather than a philosopher. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1961, 1969 and 1973.

More controversially, she lost a teaching job amid accusations of inappropriate behaviour and she and long-time partner Jean-Paul Sartre campaigned for the release of people convicted of child sex offences.

Simone Veil (1927-2017)

Simone Veil survived Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen and went on to become one of France’s most respected politicians, steering through landmark laws to liberalise contraception and abortion.

She is best known for leading the successful campaign to legalise abortion in France – despite vicious abuse and threats – as the country’s first female minister of health in 1975. 

Veil later became the first female president of the European Parliament, where she served for three years, before returning to work for the French government again.

She was given an honorary damehood from the British government, and awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion D’Honneur in France. She died in 2017, and became just the fourth women to be interred in the Parthenon, after scientist Marie Curie, and two resistance fighters Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion.

In 2021, Josephine Baker was also honoured at the Parthenon, nearly half a century after her death.

Gisèle Halimi (1927-2020)

“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to men alone.” Tunisian-born lawyer, feminist activist and co-founder of equality movement Choisir la cause des femmes said that in 1978. 

In early 1972, a year after Choisir was founded, Halimi successfully defended a teenager who was on trial for illegally aborting a pregnancy after she had been raped in the Parisian suburb of Bobigny.

The teenager’s mother and three others were also charged with conspiring to commit the illegal abortion.

It was a landmark case that paved the way for Simone Veil to persuade France’s parliament to legalise abortions in France two years later.

In 1981, Halimi was elected as an MP, where she was a vociferous campaigner for the abolition of the death penalty, and tabled bills promoting women’s rights.

Four years later, she was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, and, in 1989, she was appointed special advisor to the French delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York.

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