Most Popular Baby Girl Names in France 2024 (INSEE) and Their Meanings

The name given most often to baby girls born in France in 2024 was once again Louise: 3,130 babies. The real story is right behind it. Jade, which had slipped to fourth place in 2023, is back at No. 2 with 3,060 babies. In 2023 the gap between Louise and the runner-up was only 5 babies; in 2024 it widened to 70. The figures come from the "Fichier des prénoms" of INSEE, France's national statistics institute, and cover the whole of France, including Mayotte.

We read 2024 as a year of musical chairs: three names entered the top 30, three left it, and the top four changed order: Jade climbed back from 4th to 2nd and Alba dropped out of the top three. First, a quick look at how INSEE counts.

The INSEE list in three questions

Which name is counted? Only the first given name (premier prénom). A baby called "Louise Marie" appears in the list as Louise.

Why do all the counts end in 0 or 5? INSEE rounds counts to the nearest multiple of 5, while ranks are based on the unrounded figures. That is why Lina and Adèle (1,940), or Nour and Victoire (1,535), show the same number yet hold different ranks.

Are spellings combined? No. Julia and Giulia, or Lina and Léna, are counted as separate names.

The 30 most popular girl names in 2024

The Arabic spelling column gives the established way of writing each name in Arabic script, and the Abjad value is calculated from that spelling. Until the Arabic spelling of a Latin-script name is fixed, there is no single Abjad value for it.

Together, these 30 names were given to 59,665 girls; the 2023 top 30 added up to 60,800. 15 of the thirty names were given to more babies than a year earlier.

The in-and-out board

Here is how the 2023 top 30 compares with the 2024 top 30. A lower rank number means a higher position.

All three names that left are still in the top 100, but in the 2021–2024 data we hold, all three point the same way: in 2021 Chloé was 13th, Léa 16th and Nina 19th. 260 fewer babies were named Léa than a year before. The newcomers have different stories. Nour, Arabic for "light", was 43rd in 2021 and has climbed every year since. Zoé is a curious case: 10 fewer babies were given the name than in 2023, yet it entered the top 30 because the names ahead of it fell further.

A reshuffle in the top four

Among the top four, only Louise held its place, with 45 fewer babies. Jade rose from fourth to second with 165 more. Ambre (3,170 → 2,815) dropped to third and Alba (3,090 → 2,660) to fourth.

Risers

• Adèle: from 22nd to 15th, with 275 more babies, the largest increase among names in the top 100 in both years.
• Lou: from 16th to 11th, with 230 more babies.
• Jeanne: from 27th to 22nd.
• Outside the top 30, among names in the top 100 in both years, the fastest climber was Esmée: from 65th to 41st (1,035 babies).

Fallers

• Eva: from 11th to 21st; 430 fewer babies were given the name, the largest drop among names in the top 100 in both years, level with Alba.
• Léna: from 19th to 24th.

The figures show the movement, not its cause, so we will not guess at one.

Arabic-origin names in the list

The top 30 includes three names known to be of Arabic origin: Inaya (عناية, "care, attention"), up from 14th to 12th, plus Lina and Nour. Nur is a word that occurs in the Qur'an; Surah An-Nur takes its name from it. The French word behind Ambre also comes from Arabic عنبر. In our 2021–2024 data, names entering the top 100 for the first time in 2024 include Jannah (جنة, "paradise, garden"; 77th, 625 babies), Ayla (80th), Turkish for "moon halo", and Mariam (95th). Maryam moved up from 84th to 78th. Maryam (Mary) is the only woman named in the Qur'an.

The 2024 list through the lens of Abjad

Abjad works with Arabic letters, so we calculated the values from the Arabic spelling in the table using our site's rule: letters count as written, a shadda is not counted twice, and an alif carrying a hamza is 1.

• First letters: 6 of the top 10 names (Ambre, Alba, Emma, Alma, Alice, Anna) begin with alif (ا), a Fire letter in the classical classification; that is largely down to the alphabet, as names starting with a vowel are written with alif in Arabic. Louise (ل), Romy and Rose (ر) begin with Earth letters, Jade (ج) with a Water letter. Across the whole top 30 the split is 13 Fire, 9 Earth, 6 Water and 2 Air. Note that some authors classify the letter elements differently.
• Highest and lowest: the highest value belongs to Charlie (تشارلي) at 941, 700 of which comes from the letters ta (ت) and shin (ش) alone. The lowest is Jade (جادي) at 18.
• Shared values: Germanic Romy (رومي) and Arabic Nour (نور) meet at 256. Emma and Anna are both 52. Julia and Giulia, like Lina and Léna, are spelled the same in Arabic and so share their values (50 and 91), even though Lina is an Arabic name and Léna a short form of names such as Helena.
• A different spelling, a different value: Ambre written by sound as أمبر gives 243; the Arabic word it comes from, عنبر, gives 322. Jade: جادي 18, جاد 8. Agathe: أجاثي 515, أغاتا 1403. Luna: لونا 87, لونة 91, the same as Lina. Mariam and Maryam are counted separately by INSEE but are both written مريم (290); in 2024 the two spellings together were given to 1,150 girls.

No spelling is "luckier" than another. But because the value depends so much on the spelling, our paid reports always begin by fixing the exact spelling of the child's and the parents' names. And a value on its own is not an analysis: the real question is the balance of elements the baby's name forms with the mother's and father's names. Romy and Nour carry the same number, yet they need not suit the same family equally well.

Final word

France's 2024 list keeps familiar names at the top while quietly reshuffling further down: Chloé, Léa and Nina are falling, Nour, Adèle and Esmée are rising. A name's rank tells you about fashion; whether it suits your family depends on its meaning and on how it relates to the parents' names. INSEE has since published newer data that includes 2025 births; this article focuses on 2024.

Source: INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies), Fichier des prénoms (edition published in July 2026), births in 2023 and 2024; first given names only, counts rounded to multiples of 5.

Note: This article is for information only. Abjad and the letter elements are a traditional interpretive framework; no claim is made that a name determines anything certain about a person's life.