Ah! this is totally my thing.
I will just give you those of my user list, but my favorite French name is
Clarisse, as it is my daughter's name and I fully admit to bias.
Anyway...
Adrienne,
Annette,
Aurelie, Adélie and
Arlette start the list with As. I find all of them more beautiful than their English counterparts and classy enough for real life use.
Brigitte and
Camille I have always loved, and I feel like they are just classy and strong names. They give the appearance of frill, but are still very bold.
I like
Chantal a lot too, but that is not used as much in
France, just French.
The rarer choices I like include
Edmée,
Fabiola and
Faustine, as well as
Félicie (but that is in honor of my sister
Felicia).
Giselle,
Juliette and
Vivienne are very recognizable at this point, and even popular - but I still love them, both for history and meaning. They are very romantic and stylish as well.
Some of my absolute faves, that I am hesitant to actually use because people may falter on pronunciation, are
Zénaïde,
Solène,
Maylis,
Mélisande,
Méline,
Amandine and
Dieudonnée. My husband likes many of these ones though - so we may yet decide to go bold and choose one of these (unlikely).
The last of my list are names that are not that common, but fairly straightforward and normal by most standards:
Nadine,
Suzette,
Priscilla,
Celeste and
Daphne.
Nadine is our very top name for a girl right now... followed by Mirielle. Mirielle is technically an Americanized name, but it is very similar to
Mireille, which I love by everyone forgets how to say.
Hope that helps! As you can see, I swoon over French names.
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"How wonderful it is that no one need wait a single moment before starting to improve upon the world." -Ann FrankMama to my "bright star"
Clarisse Bituin and Wife to
Julius.
Mahal na mahal from our little family to yours!