how to say my name is in french

by Amelie Hurford

December 4, 2017

Today I’m going to show “how to say my name is in french”. A way to introduce myself

Let me explain.

Decided to learn French and hopefully to travel to a French-speaking country? That’s great news.

You’ll love it for sure because France is simply amazing! You’ll see many beautiful landscapes, a lot of historical and cultural monuments. You’ll meet loads of new people too!

Oh, wait a minute, meeting people, does that mean getting to know them and them getting to know you?

Do you know how to introduce yourself in French?

Not really?

Not a problem.

Let’s begin with some basic French Words to learn how to say your name.

Look:

In this article, I will teach you three different ways on “how to say my name is in French”

Let’s start…

1) The most common way

The usual way to say “hi, my name is…” in French is “Bonjour, je m’appelle”. It is pronounced “bon-zhoor, zhuh mah-pel”. It literally means “hi, I am called”. You can use this expression in both formal and informal situations.

It is usually the reply you say when someone asks you “bonjour, comment vous appelez-vous?” (“Hi, what’s your name?”). You could add “Et vous?” which means, word for word, “and you?”. The sentence would then be “Bonjour, je m’appelle … . Et vous?”.

However, you could also be in the situation where you meet someone of your own age group or maybe the friend of a friend, in other words, someone you could use the “tu” form with. In that case, the phrase would become “Bonjour, je m’appelle … Et toi?”

2) The most formal way

“Mon nom est…”, pronounced “mohn nohm ay”, literally means “my name is…”. This expression is not as used as “Je m’appelle…”. It is far more serious and strict and quite frankly not said a lot in France but it is grammatically perfectly correct.

You would be more likely to hear this phrase when someone is introducing themselves, when giving a speech for example. Moreover, when you first start learning how to speak French, this expression might be a little bit difficult for you to pronounce because of the nasal consonants “m”and “n”.

What exactly is a nasal consonant? Let’s have a look at the definition given by the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning:

“Nasal vowels are produced when air passes through the nose as well as the mouth.

English has nasal-like vowels in words such as sing and impossible, but the nasal consonants /n/ and /m/ are still pronounced.

These consonants are not pronounced in French when following a nasal vowel. The consonant is totally assimilated into the vowel pronunciation”.

In other words, you might struggle to pronounce “Mon nom est…” correctly because, as a beginner learner, you might not hear both letters “n” and “m”.

Therefore, instead of pronouncing “mohn nohm ay” , you might say “moh noh ay”. Not a massive deal I suppose as people would still understand you but I thought it could be interesting to highlight this little difficulty.

Close-up part of two young women shaking hands with smile while sitting at the business meeting with their coworkers

3) The most friendly way

This final way to say “my name is “ is “moi, c’est”. It literally means “me, it’s…” It is pronounced “muah say”. This is a very casual expression which you could use after someone has introduced themselves.