Françoise
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Origine latine, signifie « Franc »; nom du peuple franc/français du VIe au IXe s
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: INSEE, 2024
/fʁɑ̃.swaz/(recorded in a dictionary) French · from Wiktionary
Françoise is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 420(inferred from the name graph)
- CLChile≈1 in 48K
- RURussia≈1 in 1.8Mfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Françoise itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- #762 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 426 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 420 (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 people, est.
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Francois in FR France, CA Canada, BE Belgium and 2 more and François in CM Cameroon, CD Congo - Kinshasa.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Origine latine, signifie « Franc »; nom du peuple franc/français du VIe au IXe s.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Françoise counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #5 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 420 | 401K | Francois | 426 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #299 | ≈75,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 17 | François | 24 |
| ZA South Africa | #697 | ≈48,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Francois | 104 |
| CM Cameroon | #7 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 2 | François | 31 |
| CA Canada | #299 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 1 | Francois | 279 |
| BE Belgium | #35 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 984 | 7.4K | Francois | 160 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 7,090as François | 1 in 2.4K | 7K | Francois | 76 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Assemblee Nationale du Cameroun — sitting-MP roster, 10eme legislature (2020-2025); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Françoise is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, From Française / Frankish; here ‘người đàn bà gốc Franc’, tức ‘người đàn bà Pháp’.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Madame de Maintenonb. 1635FRnot in their usual nameMistress and later secret wife of King Louis XIV of France (1635-1719)
- Germaine Tillionb. 1907FRnot in their usual nameFrench anthropologist (1907 - 2008)
- Françoise Gilotb. 1921FRFrench painter, art critic, writer and beloved of Pablo Picasso (1921–2023)
- Anouk Aiméeb. 1932FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress (1932–2024)
- Françoise Saganb. 1935FRFrench writer (1935-2004)
- Françoise Dorléacb. 1942FRFrench actress (1942–1967)
- Françoise Hardyb. 1944FRFrench singer (1944–2024)
- Françoise Barré-Sinoussib. 1947FRFrench virologist and Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of HIV
- Béatrice Dalleb. 1964FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress
- Chiara Mastroiannib. 1972FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)29 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 401K | #2,667 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 3.6K | #540 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 32 | #8,772 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 1998 | 5 | #1,123 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 4 | #162 |
| FR France | Dictionary of French Prénoms (Benoist, 2009) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Françoise mean?
- Recorded meaning: Origine latine, signifie « Franc »; nom du peuple franc/français du VIe au IXe s.
- What are other forms of the name Françoise?
- In the etymology graph, Frances, Francisca and Francesca are forms of the same name in other languages; Francine and Francette are recorded short or pet forms.
- How do you pronounce Françoise?
- In French /fʁɑ̃.swaz/ (Wiktionary).
- Is Françoise a male or female name?
- Françoise is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: France (INSEE, 2024), Netherlands (Meertens NVB) and Spain (INE).
- In which country does Françoise have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 163 thousand people named Françoise in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled francois.
- How common is the name Françoise?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 7,090 people named François, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Françoise compared with other names?
- In France, Françoise is the 5th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Françoise?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/fran%C3%A7oiseThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Françoise” — the 5th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.