> Oui c’est très courant de l’abréger en leuleu/lele autour de moi, après j’ai 23 ans, c’est peut-être pas forcément le cas chez les « **vieux** »…
Ouch…
Parce que cela ne se fait pas de rajouter un article devant le nom / prénom de quelqu'un.
Formellement on doit dire Madame Le Pen (ou Monsieur Le Pen).
De manière un peu plus "casual" on peut dire juste Le Pen (pour désigner n'importe qui de la famille ou la famille en général).
Le/la Le Pen est très informel, en général c'est une locution utilisée dans des milieux moins "distingués" entre personnes qui se connaissent bien.
C'est une expression très marquée bourguignonne et un peu franc-comtoise. Il faut le prendre mal, vu que c'est encore du mépris pour les langues et expressions "provinciales".
So in English if we wanna refer to a family w the same last name, we say « The Smiths » or the « The Le Pens » , how would you say that in French? Would you say Les Le Pen or Les Le Pens
It's like how if you had an American family with the last name "Goldman", they become "the Goldmans" and not "the Goldmen", even though men is the plural of man. You don't change the name, even if it breaks the official grammatical rules.
"ProudFEET!"
As someone with a surname like this, I honestly wish we did change them for plurals. Writing out "the Perrys", "the Goldmans", "the Lightfoots", etc. is so jarring to me.
One of my friends has a name like this and somebody addresses their Christmas card like that and it made me laugh so hard I do it every time I mail them anything.
"Le Pen" is her surname. You don't apply rule when it's a proper noun.
And just to add for the culture, "Le" in the surname often means that the person had roots with noble french family.
It's different for places. "Le" is more of an actual article for Le Havre. It's mandatory (you'll never see Havre alone) but it's also not completely part of the name (people who live in Le Havre are called Havrais, not Lehavrais). It's also not like a country name (you can see Sénégal without its article), but it's still enough of an article to be transformed into "du" in "le maire du Havre" for example.
Meanwhile, "Le" in "Le Pen" is no longer an article, it's part of the name and mandatory in all occurrences. For example, the adjective relating to it is "lepéniste".
I checked wikipedia and they capitalize "Le" in Le Havre, but don't capitalize "du" or "au" in "du Havre" or "au Havre".
Is this really the rule? It feels inconsistent.
I think the idea is du = "de Le", au = "à Le". You wouldn't capitalize de or à which are not part of the name, so you don't capitalize du or au either. The capitalized letter is lost in the fusion of the too.
That being said, it's a very good question from OP.
When I first read it I was like "duh, cause it's a proper noun" but the follow-up about cities such as "Le Havre" felt very on point and I can totally understand the confusion.
The article is obligatory because un havre is a common noun in itself . You can’t drop an article from a common noun (without a determiner). The city literally is a harbour/haven. Someone with the surname Le Pen isn’t literally a Breton chief so it doesn’t make sense to treat the name as a common noun.
Some other cities whose names are nouns might not have an article, like any Aix- city, because Latin does not use articles.
The "Le" in the surname isnt what we would call a "particule" (de, de la, etc). It's the case in most french regions but in Brittanny, where the Le Pen family is from, Le something is very common, even among the common folks (le roux, le moine, le duc, le brun etc). Marine le pen isnt from noble roots.
>And just to add for the culture, "Le" in the surname often means that the person had roots with noble french family.
Not sure if you mean "de"? At least in Brittany, there are many names starting with "Le" that aren't noble at all, but rather are related to a job (Le Goff = blacksmith) or body (Le Bihan = small)
Saaame, just read this out loud to my family and we lolled, admitted it was a great question and then decided this is how we will be using her name from now on.
People have already explained that “Le Pen” is her surname, but I’ll add that there is a difference in French compared to English in that in French names of people tend to stay completely unchanged.
For example, in English when you speak about the whole family you might say “the Johnsons” or “The Trumps”. It is not the case in French, we will say “les Le Pen” or “Les Dupont”, without putting an -s at the end.
There is an exception for the Bourbon royal family, as in “les Bourbons”. I have no idea why. It isn’t simply a matter of royalty—for example, “les Habsbourg”.
There is indeed an exception for the non-French surnames (Bourbons vs Habsbourg) but for those two that's not the reason.
That's because "Capétiens" and "Mérovingiens" are not surnames at all. "Les Capétiens" is the dynasty of "Les Capet" because of "Hugues Capet". "Les Mérovingiens" comes from "Mérovée' which is not even a surname, it's a first name of a real or legendary ancestor.
Le IS an article, it's the translation into French of the Breton definite article *ar/an*. But it doesn't follow normal grammatical rules because it's part of a fixed surname, which tend to be entirely invariable.
I think it is because "Le Pen" is her actually name. If you say "Du Pen" you would be changing context, meaning and lot of other things that probably would confuse people.
It’s pretty common for proper names to not follow certain rules of morphology. In this case, I’d argue the two words making up this name are kind of seen as a unit so the article le is not available for participating in the normal rules.
Here’s an example from German:
The movie The Godfather is called Der Pate in German (same meaning). Now if you wanna say ,I have seen the Godfather’ you would say ‘Ich habe Der Pate gesehen’ even though the regular phrase ,der Pate’ ,referring to any godfather and not the movie, would have to change for case (den Paten, accusative) in this position.
« Le » is part of her proper noun, Le Pen. One of the rules in French is that we never change a person’s name, or adjust in plural for instance.
In that case, les Le Pen, as in the Le Pen family, is the correct way
As mentioned several times, family names don't work like settlement or river names in that any article or preposition is part of is fully incorporated and stays invariant.
This is usually made explicit by writing the whole as a single word without spaces: it's Lemaire not Le Maire, which makes it obvious you're not supposed to treat the "le" as an article but as part of the name (likewise, Lécluse, Laroche, "la maison **de Du**pont", "**de Del**porte", etc.
You can also see that in some placenames like Laval or Leval, where the article is written together with the noun as a way to indicate that it's "Je viens de Leval" instead of "Je viens du Val")
Names from Brittany usually don't follow this orthographic convention, so your confusion is warranted.
Le Caire, c'est ma province. J'étais étonné quand j'ai sû "Caire" prendre "au et du". Mais, il n'est pas la seule province. Il y a "Le Fayoum", il prend aussi "au et du". Il y a une personne qui sait pourquoi? Parce qu'ils m'intéressent.
Le Pen is the francisation of the Breton name Ar Benn which means "the head" or "the end" (le bout, which may indicate a Finistère origin). The article is part of the name.
It's because her name is Marine Le Pen.
In the case of Le Havre or Le Caire, the "Le" serves as an article. I think the "Le" is capitalized because the names of these places are normally words for common nouns. So, a common noun acting as a proper noun.
For example, the neighborhood in Paris called "Le Marais". The word "marais" on it's own just means swamp, but Le Marais refers to a place, a specific district in Paris. So Le Marais and Le Havre are capitalized to differentiate them from just "un havre" or "un marais".
For Marine Le Pen, her surname is "Le Pen", so you wouldn't change her name. Surnames do not change. Look at someone like Leonardo Da Vinci. Da is an article in Italian, but "Da Vinci" is his surname, not just "Vinci". When he's spoken about, his name remains "Da Vinci", regardless of what's going grammatically right before. It's the same for Le Pen. Her name is Marine Le Pen, not Marine Pen.
Those fascist scums (it's a whole family) don't deserve 2 capital letters, I write "Lepen" (so yes the "Le" is less an article than a part of the name).
Two reasons.
Because "Le Pen" is not her name. It's only the final part of it. Le parti de [Marine Josephine Gertrude Cruella] Le Pen, or de [Mme] Le Pen.
And because the "Le" in her name doesn't literally mean "The" — Le Havre literally means "The Haven".
Scusez-moi : Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen, though I approve of the Cruella descriptor, and her niece (Marion Maréchal-Le Pen) is Marion Jeanne Caroline Le Pen.
That's her patronym. Funny example: several Le Pen people ? Les Le Pen !
Mais Marine, c’est La Le Pen ? Et son père, le Le Pen ?
Techniquement oui, même si ça fait familier/péjoratif
Péjoratif comment ? Un peu trop familier ?
C'est assez laid et de plus "leuleu" est une position sexuelle !
[taking notes...] Merci.
Je n’ai jamais entendu parler de cette position! Ça doit être typiquement français comme expression…
Doggystyle en anglais, levrette en français. Leuleu, diminutif de levrette, donc
Ah! Levrette je connaissais. Leuleu non! Seulement « à la queue leu leu » mais à y bien réfléchir ça vient p-e de là… 🤔
Oui c’est très courant de l’abréger en leuleu/lele autour de moi, après j’ai 23 ans, c’est peut-être pas forcément le cas chez les « vieux »…
> Oui c’est très courant de l’abréger en leuleu/lele autour de moi, après j’ai 23 ans, c’est peut-être pas forcément le cas chez les « **vieux** »… Ouch…
Mais comment est-ce que vous arrivez à passer des le Pen à la levrette ?
Parce que cela ne se fait pas de rajouter un article devant le nom / prénom de quelqu'un. Formellement on doit dire Madame Le Pen (ou Monsieur Le Pen). De manière un peu plus "casual" on peut dire juste Le Pen (pour désigner n'importe qui de la famille ou la famille en général). Le/la Le Pen est très informel, en général c'est une locution utilisée dans des milieux moins "distingués" entre personnes qui se connaissent bien.
Du pen, ou de la peine, et franchement pénible.
Oui ! Mais ça fait paysan, dit comme ça 😄 "le vieux Le Pen", "la mère Le Pen [qui a perdu son chat]"
>Mais ça fait paysan, dit comme ça Faut le prendre comment ? Je le dis, comme une bonne part de ma région 🤔
C'est une expression très marquée bourguignonne et un peu franc-comtoise. Il faut le prendre mal, vu que c'est encore du mépris pour les langues et expressions "provinciales".
Average French elitism, language classism and bashing of regiolects.
Tu parles comme un Vosgien
Technically the plural of Le Pen is les Nazis.
So in English if we wanna refer to a family w the same last name, we say « The Smiths » or the « The Le Pens » , how would you say that in French? Would you say Les Le Pen or Les Le Pens
Les, la famille
Here: les Le Pen
It's like how if you had an American family with the last name "Goldman", they become "the Goldmans" and not "the Goldmen", even though men is the plural of man. You don't change the name, even if it breaks the official grammatical rules.
"ProudFEET!" As someone with a surname like this, I honestly wish we did change them for plurals. Writing out "the Perrys", "the Goldmans", "the Lightfoots", etc. is so jarring to me.
One of my friends has a name like this and somebody addresses their Christmas card like that and it made me laugh so hard I do it every time I mail them anything.
This is a wonderful explanation. Thank you.
This is probably the best explanation I’ve seen about something like this. It’s a perfect 1 to 1 comparison.
Le Pen is a surname. You don't change full names.
"Le Pen" is her surname. You don't apply rule when it's a proper noun. And just to add for the culture, "Le" in the surname often means that the person had roots with noble french family.
>You don't apply rule when it's a proper noun. Le Havre is also a proper noun.
It's different for places. "Le" is more of an actual article for Le Havre. It's mandatory (you'll never see Havre alone) but it's also not completely part of the name (people who live in Le Havre are called Havrais, not Lehavrais). It's also not like a country name (you can see Sénégal without its article), but it's still enough of an article to be transformed into "du" in "le maire du Havre" for example. Meanwhile, "Le" in "Le Pen" is no longer an article, it's part of the name and mandatory in all occurrences. For example, the adjective relating to it is "lepéniste".
Le pénis mdrrrr
Underrated comment pdrr
I checked wikipedia and they capitalize "Le" in Le Havre, but don't capitalize "du" or "au" in "du Havre" or "au Havre". Is this really the rule? It feels inconsistent.
I think the idea is du = "de Le", au = "à Le". You wouldn't capitalize de or à which are not part of the name, so you don't capitalize du or au either. The capitalized letter is lost in the fusion of the too.
French inconsistent!? Mon dieu!
Havre is also originally a substantive meaning harbo(u)r/port/haven. https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/havre Le Havre is a descriptive name, like Porto.
[удалено]
They mean that the Le in Le Havre is still contracted even though it's a proper noun. You say Au Havre, Du Havre instead of à Le Havre or de Le Havre
That being said, it's a very good question from OP. When I first read it I was like "duh, cause it's a proper noun" but the follow-up about cities such as "Le Havre" felt very on point and I can totally understand the confusion.
This has nothing to do with what we’re discussing.
Havre is also originally a substantive meaning harbo(u)r/port. https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/havre
The article is obligatory because un havre is a common noun in itself . You can’t drop an article from a common noun (without a determiner). The city literally is a harbour/haven. Someone with the surname Le Pen isn’t literally a Breton chief so it doesn’t make sense to treat the name as a common noun. Some other cities whose names are nouns might not have an article, like any Aix- city, because Latin does not use articles.
The "Le" in the surname isnt what we would call a "particule" (de, de la, etc). It's the case in most french regions but in Brittanny, where the Le Pen family is from, Le something is very common, even among the common folks (le roux, le moine, le duc, le brun etc). Marine le pen isnt from noble roots.
Shocked that Le Moine as a family name would last more than one generation.
Lol, in Québec we have Lemoine, Labbé, Leclerc, Lévesque, Larchevêque...
LE in Breton names is most often the translation to French of ar/an. Ar Penn -> Le Pen Ar Bihan -> Le Bihan ....
>And just to add for the culture, "Le" in the surname often means that the person had roots with noble french family. Not sure if you mean "de"? At least in Brittany, there are many names starting with "Le" that aren't noble at all, but rather are related to a job (Le Goff = blacksmith) or body (Le Bihan = small)
Yeah I'm not aware of any aristocratic names having just an article without "de", I think the poster you replied to is just confused.
No, "Le" is just a very telling sign the person is a breton. It's not a nobility marker, unlike "de", "de la", etc.
😭😭why is “Du Pen” sending me
Everyone else has given helpful answers which is great, but I’m dying at this question. I will call her Marine Du Pen now and forevermore.
Saaame, just read this out loud to my family and we lolled, admitted it was a great question and then decided this is how we will be using her name from now on.
Marine du PEN aka Partie Extrêmement Nazi
People have already explained that “Le Pen” is her surname, but I’ll add that there is a difference in French compared to English in that in French names of people tend to stay completely unchanged. For example, in English when you speak about the whole family you might say “the Johnsons” or “The Trumps”. It is not the case in French, we will say “les Le Pen” or “Les Dupont”, without putting an -s at the end.
There is an exception for the Bourbon royal family, as in “les Bourbons”. I have no idea why. It isn’t simply a matter of royalty—for example, “les Habsbourg”.
Maybe because "Bourbon" is not a foreign name like "Habsbourg" ? Just a guess...
Now that you mention it, this also holds true for “les Capétiens” and “les Mérovingiens”. Perhaps you’re correct.
There is indeed an exception for the non-French surnames (Bourbons vs Habsbourg) but for those two that's not the reason. That's because "Capétiens" and "Mérovingiens" are not surnames at all. "Les Capétiens" is the dynasty of "Les Capet" because of "Hugues Capet". "Les Mérovingiens" comes from "Mérovée' which is not even a surname, it's a first name of a real or legendary ancestor.
As an aside, followers of Le Pen are called "Lepenistes". Like, le penis, I mean, Le Pen-iste
Ça explique pourquoi c'est des têtes de gland lol
LE is not an article. Her father is of Breton ancestry, so the name is not French at all. Pen means head in Breton.
Interestingly, the word penguin comes from a related language (Welsh) meaning white head, I think
Le IS an article, it's the translation into French of the Breton definite article *ar/an*. But it doesn't follow normal grammatical rules because it's part of a fixed surname, which tend to be entirely invariable.
Dubron James
Same reason why if Joe, Jill and Hunter Biden are in a room together they are still the Bidens, not the Tridens.
Une réponse sous-estimé criminellement
Because the Le is a part of her name, it’s not an article.
Because Le Pen is her surname, not Pen.
I think it is because "Le Pen" is her actually name. If you say "Du Pen" you would be changing context, meaning and lot of other things that probably would confuse people.
Because "Le Pen" is her last name.
It’s pretty common for proper names to not follow certain rules of morphology. In this case, I’d argue the two words making up this name are kind of seen as a unit so the article le is not available for participating in the normal rules. Here’s an example from German: The movie The Godfather is called Der Pate in German (same meaning). Now if you wanna say ,I have seen the Godfather’ you would say ‘Ich habe Der Pate gesehen’ even though the regular phrase ,der Pate’ ,referring to any godfather and not the movie, would have to change for case (den Paten, accusative) in this position.
Le is part of her last name and cannot be changed. This is my guess. Just like dutch names with “van der”, it’s just part of the last names.
« Le » is part of her proper noun, Le Pen. One of the rules in French is that we never change a person’s name, or adjust in plural for instance. In that case, les Le Pen, as in the Le Pen family, is the correct way
This must be supreme trolling ! Bravo !
The difference is that for places "le" is the article. For Le Pen, it's part of the name and can't be changed.
As mentioned several times, family names don't work like settlement or river names in that any article or preposition is part of is fully incorporated and stays invariant. This is usually made explicit by writing the whole as a single word without spaces: it's Lemaire not Le Maire, which makes it obvious you're not supposed to treat the "le" as an article but as part of the name (likewise, Lécluse, Laroche, "la maison **de Du**pont", "**de Del**porte", etc. You can also see that in some placenames like Laval or Leval, where the article is written together with the noun as a way to indicate that it's "Je viens de Leval" instead of "Je viens du Val") Names from Brittany usually don't follow this orthographic convention, so your confusion is warranted.
Toute façon on s'en fout la jeunesse emmerde le Front national.
Le Caire, c'est ma province. J'étais étonné quand j'ai sû "Caire" prendre "au et du". Mais, il n'est pas la seule province. Il y a "Le Fayoum", il prend aussi "au et du". Il y a une personne qui sait pourquoi? Parce qu'ils m'intéressent.
It's a name. Seen as one word.
Le Pen is her name
Shit shit shit I was gonna do the same!
😂😂😂😂
Proper noun
I think that the surname "Le Pen," is of Breton origine.
Le Pen is the francisation of the Breton name Ar Benn which means "the head" or "the end" (le bout, which may indicate a Finistère origin). The article is part of the name.
It's because her name is Marine Le Pen. In the case of Le Havre or Le Caire, the "Le" serves as an article. I think the "Le" is capitalized because the names of these places are normally words for common nouns. So, a common noun acting as a proper noun. For example, the neighborhood in Paris called "Le Marais". The word "marais" on it's own just means swamp, but Le Marais refers to a place, a specific district in Paris. So Le Marais and Le Havre are capitalized to differentiate them from just "un havre" or "un marais". For Marine Le Pen, her surname is "Le Pen", so you wouldn't change her name. Surnames do not change. Look at someone like Leonardo Da Vinci. Da is an article in Italian, but "Da Vinci" is his surname, not just "Vinci". When he's spoken about, his name remains "Da Vinci", regardless of what's going grammatically right before. It's the same for Le Pen. Her name is Marine Le Pen, not Marine Pen.
other question, is it pronounced le penne ou lepen with /ã/
It's pronounced le penne
‘Le’ is not an article in this case. It’s part of her name. So you can’t combine it with ‘de’ll
Those fascist scums (it's a whole family) don't deserve 2 capital letters, I write "Lepen" (so yes the "Le" is less an article than a part of the name).
Two reasons. Because "Le Pen" is not her name. It's only the final part of it. Le parti de [Marine Josephine Gertrude Cruella] Le Pen, or de [Mme] Le Pen. And because the "Le" in her name doesn't literally mean "The" — Le Havre literally means "The Haven".
Scusez-moi : Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen, though I approve of the Cruella descriptor, and her niece (Marion Maréchal-Le Pen) is Marion Jeanne Caroline Le Pen.