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NAMES

Germans stay traditional with 2014 baby names

A pair of old favourites, Sophie and Maximilian, once again topped the table of Germany's favourite baby names for 2014, in a list dominated by traditional monikers.

Published: 15 April 2015 15:46 CEST
Germans stay traditional with 2014 baby names
Photo: Shutterstock

The Society for the German Language reported on Wednesday that the top two were followed by Marie and Alexander in second place and Sophia and Paul at number three – all occupying exactly the same spots in the table as they did last year.

In fact, there were no new entries at all in either the girls' or boys' top 10 – belying an early prediction at New Year that Leah would make the cut for girls.

This year's list would even be familiar to someone who hadn't checked in the last 10 years, with boys receiving the same top three names in 2004 while Marie, Sophie and Maria were most popular for last decade's baby girls.

But there were some regional differences: north and east Germans' top 10 for girls included Charlotte and Johanna, while southerners and westerners liked Anna and Louisa.

Among boys, meanwhile, Finn, Jonas and Oskar were among the most popular names in the north and east, while southerners and westerners preferred Jacob and Leon.

2014 saw 438,491 girls and 459,301 boys named in Germany, a ratio of 48.8 percent to 51.2 percent.

Their parents chose from among 56,919 different names, of which 38,175 were given to only one child each – although on average, each name was given to 15.8 children.

The top 10 lists accounted for just 15.5 percent of names parents gave their children.

Germans' top 10 baby names in 2014

 

1. Top of the list were last year's champions, Maximilian and Sophie. Parents loved Sophie for girls across Germany, but Maximilian was most popular in the south.

2. Second place went to Marie for girls and Alexander for boys.

3. Sophia and Paul – a name particularly beloved of east Germans last year – rounded out the top threes.

4. Maria and Elias, both staples of the last 10 years of baby names, both came in fourth.

 

5. Emma and Luis slotted into fifth place. Luis is a relatively new arrival in the top 10 since 2010.

6. At number six, while Luka has been among the most popular names for years, Mia is holding onto a mid-table place it's held since  2009.

 

7. Hannah and Ben have both been top-10 contenders only for the last three or four years.

8. Emilia hasn't been in the top 10 before in the last few years, but Leon is an old favourite – although it hasn't come top since 2007.

9. Anna and Lukas – both fixtures of any gathering of Germans born in the last 20 years – come in ninth.

 

10. Last but not least: Johanna and Noah, both names beloved of northerners and westerners.

 

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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