Sometimes a true love at first sight, sometimes the product of compromise, a first name is never the fruit of chance. For the parents who choose it, it reflects their culture, their origins, their shared history, their tastes. But what happens when the name they believed was unique suddenly becomes one of the most common in the country?
A Name Chosen for Its Simplicity
That is precisely the predicament Arnaud and Elsa found themselves in after settling on the name Alma for their daughter. “My father is of Portuguese origin and doesn’t speak French well, so we wanted to find a name that would be easy for him to pronounce,” Elsa explained. “Alma came about almost by chance, and we both liked it,” her partner added.
When Elsa was pregnant in 2019, this soft, Latin-origin name was still relatively confidential — or so the young parents believed. What they did not yet know was that it combined several highly desirable criteria — two syllables, a modern sound — that would quickly make it unavoidable.
Long absent from the Insee ranking of the 50 most given names, Alma burst into it in 2022 at 16th place. By 2025, some 2,500 baby girls named Alma were born, making it the fourth most given name in France that year. In Paris, where the couple lives, Alma sits at the very top of the list for girls’ names.
“It Honestly Drove Me Crazy”
For the young parents, this sudden popularity has been difficult to accept. “I think we became aware of how popular the name Alma was when our daughter arrived at nursery, a little after Covid. I remember when we were at the park, we’d hear ‘Alma’ being shouted around us, but it was never for her,” Elsa recalled.
Their daughter now regularly encounters other little Almas, particularly at school. “Luckily, she’s the only one in her class this year, but in nursery there were two of them, and honestly, it drove me crazy,” Elsa said. The problem, she added, is that her daughter’s surname initials were tacked onto her first name to distinguish her from the other girl. “As a result, at the end of the school year, when she was asked her name, she would answer ‘Alma B.'”
A “Personal Wound” for One Father
Elsa and Arnaud are not alone in regretting the popularity of the name they chose. François admits it was a “personal wound” to have given in and let his then-partner choose the name Gabriel for his son.
In 2014, the year of his birth, Gabriel already held second place in the rankings, and has occupied the top spot since 2021. The future parents were well aware of this. “We knew from the start that this name was widely given, which acted as a deterrent for me. I searched for other boys’ names until the final days to avoid Gabriel… in vain. Neither the mother nor I could agree on a common choice,” François sighed.
Since then, he has been regularly confronted with the name’s ubiquity. “My son has always had boys with the same name at his school, in sports classes,” he said.
The Disappointment of Doing “Like Everyone Else”
However trendy it may be among young parents, the name Gabriel is in reality far less common today than other star names of the past, such as Jean and Marie. According to Insee data, 4,625 baby boys named Gabriel were born in 2025, compared with more than 53,000 named Jean and 31,000 named Marie in 1946.
The reason is simple: over the past 40 years, the number of first names has exploded. The 643,900 babies born in France in 2025 carry 65,940 different first names, compared with 8,000 after the war. “It’s a false impression that there are many little Gabriels born each year,” Baptiste Coulmont, a sociology professor at the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay and author of a book on the sociology of first names, recently told HuffPost. “Even with nearly 50,000 births recorded over the past ten years, their proportion is tiny.”
For Elsa, the hardest part is the feeling that the choice of the name Alma was “stolen” from her. “When you choose an original name and in the end everyone carries it, it’s hard. What disturbs me most is thinking that I must have unconsciously been sensitive to the same criteria that influenced other parents.” Would she do it again? “If I had to do it over, I would choose another name,” she whispered. “If I had known Alma would end up in the top 10, I would have thought it through more,” Arnaud agreed.
Embracing the Choice Rather Than Regretting It
But sometimes parents are proud of the trendy name they chose. That is the case for Charles-Marie and Alisson, who are happy to have followed their instinct in naming their first-born Louis. “We stayed the course, and today we have no regrets,” Charles-Marie said. “The name suits him perfectly, and we feel no frustration hearing other children called by the same name.” He added that he and his wife are regularly complimented on their choice. “We are convinced that you shouldn’t hesitate for a second to give a classic and popular name if that’s what you want.”
What’s more, the children themselves do not always share their parents’ disappointment. François’s son Gabriel, for instance, pays little mind to bearing the most given name for years. “When I asked him if it bothered him to meet other Gabriels, he answered, ‘It’s no big deal. One of them is even my friend!'” That may soften the regrets a little.
