What Is Your Name in French? Ask and Answer It Right

How to ask "what is your name" formally

The formal way to ask what is your name in French is Comment vous appelez-vous ? This is the phrase to reach for with strangers, older people, teachers, interviewers, shop staff, or anyone you would address respectfully in English. Word for word it does not translate as "what is your name" at all. It literally means "how do you call yourself," because the verb behind it, s'appeler, is a reflexive verb meaning "to call oneself." French treats a name as something you do to yourself, an action, rather than a fixed possession, and once that clicks, a lot of the grammar around names starts to make sense.

You will also hear the shorter, equally correct Vous vous appelez comment ?, which keeps the question word at the end, a very common pattern in spoken French. Both versions are polite and interchangeable in most situations, though Comment vous appelez-vous ? with the inverted verb order reads as slightly more formal and is the one you will see written on hotel forms, in customer service scripts, and in textbooks that teach the "proper" version first.

There is also a more literal formal option, Quel est votre nom ?, meaning "what is your name" using the verb "to be" rather than "to call oneself." It is completely correct French, and you will hear it from receptionists, border agents, and on official paperwork, but it carries a slightly administrative, almost bureaucratic tone. If you want to sound like a natural speaker rather than a form being filled out, Comment vous appelez-vous ? is the better everyday choice, even in formal company.

A small but useful distinction: nom on its own often leans toward surname or family name in formal French, while prénom specifically means first name. If a form or an official asks Quel est votre nom ? and then separately Quel est votre prénom ?, they are asking for your last name and first name as two different fields, which can trip up learners expecting one question to cover both.

How to ask "what is your name" informally

Among friends, classmates, children, and people roughly your own age, French switches to the informal Comment tu t'appelles ? Same underlying verb, same literal meaning of "how do you call yourself," just swapped to the familiar tu instead of the formal vous. This is the version you will hear constantly in casual settings: at a party, in a language exchange, among students, or anywhere the vibe is relaxed rather than professional.

Spoken French loves to move the question word to the end of the sentence in casual speech, so you will very often hear Tu t'appelles comment ? instead of the "textbook" word order. This is not sloppy or incorrect. It is simply how real conversational French sounds, and recognizing it matters just as much as being able to produce the more formal inverted version, because you will hear the casual order far more often once you are actually talking with people.

The informal literal version also exists: Quel est ton nom ?, meaning "what is your name," parallel to the formal Quel est votre nom ? covered above. It is grammatically fine but, just like its formal counterpart, it sounds a touch stiff for casual conversation. Among friends, reaching for Comment tu t'appelles ? or Tu t'appelles comment ? will always sound more natural than the literal "what is your name" translation.

One useful note for travelers: in Quebec French and across much of the French speaking world outside of workplace or government settings, people move to tu more quickly and easily than in mainland France, where vous tends to linger longer between new acquaintances. If you are unsure which region's habits apply, defaulting to the formal form first is always the safer opening move, and we cover exactly how to judge that in the next section.

How to answer: "Je m'appelle..."

The standard, everywhere-you-go answer is Je m'appelle followed by your name, for example "Je m'appelle Sarah" or "Je m'appelle Karim." It literally means "I call myself," using the same reflexive verb s'appeler from the question. This single phrase works whether someone asked you formally or informally, which makes it one of the most useful and forgiving phrases in the entire language: you never have to worry about matching formality on your answer, only on your question.

The reflexive verb s'appeler conjugates across all the pronouns, and it is worth learning the full pattern once so the logic sticks:

• Je m'appelle (zhuh mah pell), I call myself, I am called
• Tu t'appelles (tü tah pell), you call yourself (informal)
• Il/Elle s'appelle (eel/ell sah pell), he/she calls himself/herself
• Nous nous appelons (noo noo zah pluh ohn), we call ourselves
• Vous vous appelez (voo voo zah play), you call yourself/yourselves (formal/plural)
• Ils/Elles s'appellent (eel/ell sah pell), they call themselves

Two other answers exist and are both worth knowing, even though Je m'appelle is the one you will use most. Mon nom est, followed by your name, is more formal and reads closer to the English "my name is." You will see it on written introductions, official documents, and in more formal spoken registers, but it is used less often in casual speech than Je m'appelle. The other option is the very casual Moi, c'est, meaning "me, it's," which friends use with each other constantly, as in "Moi, c'est Julie," roughly "I'm Julie" or "As for me, it's Julie." It is warm, relaxed, and extremely common in real conversation, but it would sound a little too casual on a job interview or with someone significantly older than you.

Whichever version you use, French speakers will almost always follow up your name with a small closing phrase, most commonly Enchanté if the speaker is male or Enchantée if the speaker is female, both meaning "pleased to meet you." The two spellings are pronounced identically, so listening alone will not tell you which one someone used, but writing it correctly matters, and saying the correct one about yourself (matching your own gender) is expected. We cover this and a handful of related phrases in more detail later in this guide.

Vous or tu: choosing the right formality

The single biggest thing that trips up learners asking or answering names in French is not vocabulary, it is formality. French keeps a live, functioning distinction between vous, the formal or plural you, and tu, the informal you, and getting it backwards can land as rude, overly familiar, or simply awkward, even though your grammar is technically correct either way.

Use vous with:

• Strangers you are meeting for the first time, especially adults
• People clearly older than you, or in a position of authority
• Teachers, doctors, interviewers, police officers, and officials
• Shop staff, waiters, receptionists, and anyone in a service role
• Business contacts and colleagues you do not yet know well
• More than one person at once, since vous also serves as the plural you

Use tu with:

• Friends, close acquaintances, and people your own age in casual settings
• Family members, regardless of age
• Children, who are almost always addressed with tu
• Classmates and fellow students
• Anyone who has explicitly invited you to use tu with them

When you genuinely cannot tell which one applies, default to vous. Starting formal and being invited to switch to tu later, a moment French speakers sometimes mark with the phrase "On peut se tutoyer," meaning roughly "we can use tu with each other," is completely normal and costs you nothing. Starting with tu when vous was expected can come across as presumptuous, especially with older people or in professional contexts, and is a much easier mistake to make awkward than the reverse.

It is also worth knowing that regional habits differ. In Quebec, casual settings move to tu faster and more broadly than they typically do in mainland France, and workplace culture varies too, some offices use tu across the board while more traditional ones expect vous between staff and management indefinitely. When traveling or meeting people from a French speaking region you are unfamiliar with, watch how locals address each other and mirror it rather than assuming one fixed rule applies everywhere.

Other natural ways to ask someone's name

Beyond the core formal and informal questions, a few other phrasings are worth recognizing, because you will hear them and because they add nuance to how you ask.

Asking about someone else's name

To ask a third person's name, French uses the same verb pattern with il or elle: Comment s'appelle-t-il ? for a male, "what is his name," or Comment s'appelle-t-elle ? for a female, "what is her name." Casually, you will often hear the simpler Comment il s'appelle ? or Comment elle s'appelle ?, dropping the formal inversion, which is extremely common in relaxed speech and completely understood, even though it technically bends the "textbook" grammar rule about inverting the verb and subject in a question.

Asking about a child's name

Children are addressed with tu, so you would ask a child directly Comment tu t'appelles ?, sometimes softened with an affectionate addition like "mon grand" (for a boy, roughly "big guy") or "ma belle" (for a girl, roughly "sweetheart"). To ask a parent about their child in the third person, say Comment s'appelle ton fils ? ("what is your son's name") or Comment s'appelle ta fille ? ("what is your daughter's name").

A softer, more indirect way to ask

Sometimes French speakers soften the direct question with Puis-je vous demander votre nom ?, meaning "may I ask your name," a polite formal cushion often used at the start of a phone call, a customer service interaction, or a first professional meeting. Informally, the equivalent softening is rarer, since Comment tu t'appelles ? already reads as friendly and unobtrusive on its own.

Once you can move comfortably between these forms, it is worth building out the rest of your greeting vocabulary. Our guide to essential French phrases collects the most useful everyday expressions in one place, so asking a name becomes just the opening line of a longer, natural conversation rather than an isolated question you memorized in a vacuum.

Pronunciation guide: how to say it out loud

French pronunciation runs on nasal vowels, silent letters, and liaison between words, all of which can make written phrases look nothing like how they sound. Here is a simple, practical breakdown of the key words in this guide, using rough English-based sound approximations rather than formal phonetic notation, since the goal is getting you speaking quickly, not passing a linguistics exam.

• Comment, koh-mahn (the final "t" is silent, and "ent" nasalizes toward "ahn")
• vous, voo (a rounded, closed "oo" sound)
• appelez-vous, ah-play voo (the "z" links the two words together in speech)
• tu, tü (round your lips as if for "oo" but say "ee," a sound with no real English equivalent)
• t'appelles, tah-pell (stress falls evenly, with a light final "l")
• je m'appelle, zhuh mah-pell ("je" is a soft "zh" sound, like the "s" in "measure")
• quel, kel (rhymes roughly with the English word "cell")
• nom, nohn (a nasal vowel, air pushed partly through the nose, no hard "m" at the end)
• enchanté, ahn-shahn-tay (two nasal sounds back to back, both "ahn")

Two features deserve special attention because they are the most common source of confusion for English speakers. The first is the nasal vowel, heard in comment, nom, and enchanté. Instead of closing your mouth to finish an "n" or "m" sound the way English does, French lets air escape partly through the nose while the mouth stays open, so the consonant is felt rather than fully pronounced. It takes real listening and mimicking to get right, and it is one of the sounds most worth training specifically, since mixing it up can genuinely change which word a listener hears.

The second is liaison, the way French links the end of one word into the start of the next when the second word begins with a vowel sound. In vous appelez-vous, the "s" at the end of vous is normally silent on its own, but when followed by a word starting with a vowel, it gets pronounced and glides into the next word, so it comes out closer to "voo-zah-play-voo" than four separate, choppy words. Learning to hear and reproduce liaison is a big part of why fluent French sounds so fast and flowing to learners, and it is exactly the kind of pattern that is best absorbed by listening and repeating rather than by memorizing a rule. For a deeper walkthrough of building accurate pronunciation habits generally, our guide on how to improve your pronunciation covers technique that applies directly here.

Spelling your name in French

Once you have exchanged names, the next natural question is often about spelling, especially for names that are unusual, foreign, or easy to mishear. To ask how something is spelled, say Comment ça s'écrit ?, meaning "how is that written" or "how is that spelled." Formally, to ask someone to spell their name for you, say Pouvez-vous épeler votre nom ?, "can you spell your name," or more casually, Tu peux épeler ton nom ?

To spell your own name out loud, you say each letter using its French pronunciation, which sounds quite different from English even though the alphabet itself is identical. A few examples that regularly confuse learners: the letter "G" is pronounced closer to "zhay," "J" sounds like "zhee," "H" is "ahsh," and "W" is "doo-bluh-vay," literally "double v." Vowels shift too: "A" is "ah," "E" is "uh," "I" is "ee," "O" is "oh," and "U" is the same rounded "ü" sound from tu. Our full French alphabet guide breaks down every letter's pronunciation individually, which is worth bookmarking before any situation where you might need to spell your name, book a reservation, or give an email address out loud.

One extra wrinkle worth knowing: French sometimes uses reference words to clarify tricky letters over the phone, similar to the English "B as in bravo," though there is no single official system the way the military alphabet works in English. You might hear someone say "B comme Bernard" (B as in Bernard) or "V comme Victor" to disambiguate a letter that is easy to mishear, and you can do the same with your own name if a letter keeps getting lost.

Full introduction dialogues you can copy

Seeing the phrases inside a real exchange makes them far easier to remember than studying them in isolation. Here are three short dialogues covering formal, informal, and a slightly extended version.

Formal introduction

A: Bonjour, comment vous appelez-vous ?
(Hello, what is your name?)
B: Je m'appelle Amélie. Et vous ?
(My name is Amélie. And you?)
A: Je m'appelle Thomas. Enchanté.
(My name is Thomas. Pleased to meet you.)
B: Enchantée.
(Pleased to meet you, said by a woman.)

Informal introduction

A: Salut, tu t'appelles comment ?
(Hi, what's your name?)
B: Moi, c'est Lucas. Et toi ?
(I'm Lucas. And you?)
A: Moi, c'est Chloé.
(I'm Chloé.)

Extended introduction with spelling

A: Bonjour. Comment vous appelez-vous ?
(Hello. What is your name?)
B: Je m'appelle Siobhan.
(My name is Siobhan.)
A: Pardon, comment ça s'écrit ?
(Sorry, how is that spelled?)
B: S, I, O, B, H, A, N.
(Spelled out letter by letter, using French letter pronunciation.)
A: Merci. Enchanté, Siobhan.
(Thank you. Pleased to meet you, Siobhan.)

Notice that every version follows the same basic shape: a greeting, the question, the answer with your name, an optional "et vous" or "et toi" to keep the exchange balanced, and a closing "enchanté" or "enchantée." Once that shape feels automatic, you can slot it into almost any first meeting, whether you are checking into a hotel or introducing yourself at a language meetup.

Common mistakes to avoid

A handful of small errors show up again and again among learners asking or answering this question, and each one is easy to fix once you know it is there.

• Mixing up vous and tu. The single most noticeable mistake. Default to vous with anyone you do not know well, and let context or an invitation guide you toward tu.
• Forgetting the reflexive pronoun. Saying "J'appelle Marie" instead of "Je m'appelle Marie" drops the reflexive "me" and changes the meaning toward "I am calling Marie," as in phoning her, rather than "my name is Marie."
• Confusing nom and prénom. Nom often means surname or last name in formal contexts, while prénom means first name. Answering a form's "Nom" field with your first name, or vice versa, is a common slip.
• Skipping the gender agreement on enchanté. A male speaker says enchanté, a female speaker says enchantée. Both are pronounced the same, but writing or being conscious of the correct form matters and is expected in formal writing.
• Overusing the literal "Quel est votre nom." It is correct, but it sounds like a form or an official asking, not a person striking up conversation. Comment vous appelez-vous or Comment tu t'appelles sound far more natural in daily speech.
• Flattening the nasal vowels. Pronouncing "comment" or "nom" with a full, closed English "n" or "m" sound instead of a nasal vowel is one of the clearest signals of a non-native accent, and one of the more fixable ones with focused listening practice.

None of these mistakes will stop someone from understanding you, French speakers are generally patient and appreciative when learners make the effort, but fixing them is what moves your introduction from "understandable" to "natural sounding." If pronunciation slips like these are a recurring theme for you beyond just this phrase, our broader guide on how to learn French covers a fuller study approach, including where pronunciation work fits into the bigger picture.

Related phrases for introductions

Once names are exchanged, a real conversation naturally moves on to a few standard follow up questions. Knowing these keeps the exchange going instead of stalling out right after the introduction.

• Enchanté / Enchantée (ahn-shahn-tay), pleased to meet you, said right after learning someone's name
• Comment ça va ? (koh-mahn sah vah), how are you, a natural follow up after names
• Quel âge as-tu ? / Quel âge avez-vous ? (kel ahzh ah tü / kel ahzh ah vay voo), how old are you, informal and formal
• D'où viens-tu ? / D'où venez-vous ? (doo vyen tü / doo vuh nay voo), where are you from, informal and formal
• Qu'est-ce que tu fais dans la vie ? (kes kuh tü fay dahn lah vee), what do you do for a living, informal

If a conversation turns to age, you will need to know French numbers to actually answer, so our guide on French numbers is worth having ready. And since first meetings often drift toward making plans, knowing how to talk about days and times helps too. Our guide on telling time in French covers exactly that, so "let's meet at three o'clock" becomes just as natural as the introduction itself.

Politeness words round out a good first impression as well. A simple "merci" (thank you) after someone spells their name for you, or a polite acknowledgment if you mishear something and need it repeated, keeps the tone warm. If you ever need to apologize mid conversation, whether for mishearing a name or bumping into someone, our guide on how to say sorry in French has you covered with the right level of formality for each situation.

How to practice asking and answering out loud

Reading through formal and informal forms, pronunciation notes, and dialogues gets you most of the way there, but the phrase only truly sticks once you have said it out loud, ideally more than once, under something close to real conversational pressure. A name exchange is short and low stakes, which makes it an ideal first thing to practice speaking, since there is very little to get wrong beyond the formality choice and the pronunciation.

A few practical ways to build this into a habit:

1. Say both versions daily. Practice Comment vous appelez-vous and Comment tu t'appelles back to back every day for a week, along with Je m'appelle plus your own name, until reaching for either one is automatic rather than something you have to translate in your head.
2. Record yourself. Say the formal dialogue and the informal dialogue from the earlier section out loud, record it, and listen back for the nasal vowels in comment and enchanté specifically, since those are the sounds most likely to be flattened without you noticing.
3. Practice the switch, not just the phrase. Formality is a judgment call as much as a vocabulary item, so practice deciding which form fits a scenario (a job interview, a classmate, a shopkeeper, a child) and saying the matching question out loud for each one.
4. Use it in a real or simulated conversation. The phrase only becomes fully natural once you have used it to actually meet someone, whether that is a real French speaker, a language exchange partner, or a conversation partner you can talk to on demand.

If you do not always have a native speaker or language partner on hand, which is the reality for most learners most of the time, practicing alone out loud is still valuable and far better than only reading silently. Our guide on how to practice speaking a new language alone walks through techniques that work even without a partner in the room, and they apply directly to drilling a short, high value exchange like this one.

How SPAIKING helps you speak French with confidence

Everything in this guide points toward the same conclusion: knowing the formal and informal forms of "what is your name" matters, but being able to produce them instantly, at the right formality, with reasonable pronunciation, in the middle of a real exchange, is the actual skill worth building. That gap between knowing a phrase and being able to use it under mild social pressure is exactly what SPAIKING is built to close.

With SPAIKING, you can practice a full introduction, greeting, asking a name, answering with Je m'appelle, spelling a tricky name, and closing with enchanté, as a real spoken exchange with an AI partner that responds to what you actually say. Because the conversation talks back, you get to notice in the moment whether you reached for vous or tu correctly, whether your nasal vowels landed, and whether the whole exchange felt natural or stilted, instead of only finding out later when a real French speaker looks confused.

A few reasons this matters specifically for a phrase like this one:

• It is always available. No need to wait for a language partner to be free. Practice the formal and informal versions back to back whenever you have a spare few minutes.
• It corrects your pronunciation in real time. The nasal vowels in comment and enchanté are hard to self check, and live correction catches slips your own ear tends to forgive.
• It is judgment free. Mixing up vous and tu while practicing costs nothing, which makes it far easier to actually internalize the difference than getting it wrong once in front of a real stranger.
• It builds toward real conversation. A name exchange is rarely the whole conversation. Practicing it inside a longer spoken exchange, rather than as an isolated flashcard phrase, prepares you for what actually happens when you meet someone.

This short phrase is a small piece of French, but it is also usually the very first thing you will ever say to someone in the language, which makes it worth getting comfortable with early. Practice it out loud, get it corrected, and use it enough times that it stops feeling like a memorized line and starts feeling like your own. You can start on the pricing page or head back to the homepage to see how SPAIKING works, and turn this guide into a conversation you can actually have.