French Street Signs – Famous people and Places

Have you noticed on any of your trips to Paris or around France, (or even just on photos) that many of the streets are named the same? It can be a bit confusing when searching in your GPS, and the same street name comes up in many different towns. That might be because the street is named after a person of interest or it simply describes a location or significant building that is on the street. Our early experiences of finding towns and streets that have the same names is something we still laugh at. You'll find more in our post Our Story #4 - Aussies in France.

French Street Signs - Famous people and Places

Examples are rue de la Mairie, translated as the Town Hall Street, or rue d'Église, which simply means the Church Street. These street names describe the main point of interest along the street. Interestingly,  rue d'Église is the most popular name for a road in France. 

Iconic French men and women are honoured with streets and squares all over France, but not everyone knows about some of the lesser known people, places and events which appear on plaques throughout the country. The French town planners do though and they love their politicians, presidents, philosophers and writers. Wars even made household names out of prominent soldiers!

French Street Signs - Famous Leaders, Soldiers, Engineers

One of the most famous of all, and certainly one of the few French women to be honoured with street names, is Jeanne d’Arc. Born around 1412, the peasant girl from Domrémy (now named Domrémy-la-Pucelle) liberated Orléans from the English in 1428 but was captured and burnt at the stake in Rouen three years later. An interesting fact is that the town was renamed to reflect the nickname of Jeanne d'Arch, la Pucelle d'Orléans. 

Lafayette, a French general who crossed the Atlantic from Rochefort to join in yet another fight with the English is also recognised on street signs. Lafayette, Géneral Leclerc and Charles de Gaulle are all prominent soldiers who are honoured with their names plaques across the country.

Place Jean-Bart in Dunkerque celebrates the 17th century naval commander and privateer who served King Louis XIV and became a local hero. He was ennobled by King Louis XIV and his statue, with his sabre pointing towards England, stands on the former Place Royale, now named Place Jean-Bart.

Marquis de Vauban was a military engineer to Louis XIV who updated the fortifications of over 300 cities and built nearly 40 new fortresses and harbours. Now twelve of the sites Vauban updated are registered Unesco World Heritage sites.

Place des All Blacks in the northern town of Le Quesnoy pays homage to the Kiwi soldiers who liberated the town in November 1918.

French Street Signs - Biologists, Chemists, Politicians

The most frequently named person on France’s street signs is the 19^th century microbiologist and chemist, Louis Pasteur. He is known for dedicating his life researching diseases and immunisation. Pasteur launched the first rabies vaccination in 1885 but is probably most well-known for inventing pasteurisation. While pasteurisation is associated mostly with milk, Pasteur perfected the process on the vineyards around his home in Arbois. Boulevard Pasteur in the 15th arondissement of Paris is just one of the streets named after him.

Another 19^th century French chemist who has numerous streets named after himself is François-Vincent Raspail. As well as being a chemist, Raspail was also a Republican politician and one of the founders of cell theory in biology. He was among the first scientists to promote the use of microscopes. He has the longest boulevard in Paris named after him.

French Street Signs - Aviators

Aviators are also amongst the celebrated persons with avenues named after them. Louis Blériot, the pioneer aviator, has an avenue named after him in Calais which is not far from where he took off on the first powered flight across the English Channel in July of 1909.

French Street Signs - Writers, Book characters

Voltaire, the French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian,  crops up everywhere as does poet and playwright Victor Hugo. Hugo was famous as a human rights activist as well as for dramatic novels such as Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Victor Hugo was buried in 1885 in the Panthéon, Paris and has hundreds of kilometres of roads named in his honour across France.

The founder of Naturalism, a literary style set out to prove how social conditions and environment shaped the human character, Émile Zola, is honoured widely across France with streets and Places (town squares) named after him.

François-René de Chateaubriand born in 1768 in Saint Malo, the founder of Romanticism, is honoured with a street named after him in the 8th arrondissement, Paris. Chateaubriand was born in Saint Malo but lived in Combourg in the family owned medieval castle. This castle became the stronghold of the Chateaubriand family and is where François-René de Chateaubriand, often quoted as the “most famous of all French romantic authors” lived and wrote.

Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), those famous characters immortalised in the novel of Alexandre Dumas, even have roads named after them. D’Artagnan, their captain, has a street named all for himself in Toulouse. Rue d’Artagnan, in the 12th arrondissement Paris, is named after Charles de Batz-Castelmore, Sieur d’Artagnan, captain of King Louis XIV’s musketeers.

French Street Signs - Traditions, Places and more

Something a little different is rue des Johnnies in Roscoff. This street is named after the Roscoff onion sellers that set off from Roscoff on boats heading to Britain on their bikes each summer ladened with strings of delicious sweet Roscoff onions to sell.

When traveling in France, take notice of the street names and see how many street signs you find honouring famous places and people, or even significant events and dates like Place du 8 Mai 1945 in Ploumagoar or Place des Sabotiers in the small village of Saint-Gilles-Pligeaux.

Happy French street sign hunting!

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