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French · phrasebook

How to say what is your name in French

What is your name in French is comment tu t'appelles to someone you call tu, and comment vous appelez-vous to someone you call vous. Word for word, both ask how do you call yourself. The answer starts with je m'appelle.

Aurélien CuvelierAurélien CuvelierSep 19, 2026
comment tu t'appelles
what is your name
one person you call tu

The ways to say it

comment tu t'appelles
what is your name
one person you call tu
comment vous appelez-vous
same meaning
someone you call vous, or several people

How to use it

The two exchanges below are the same meeting held twice, once in tu and once in vous. The question changes; the answer does not, because je m'appelle is about the speaker and needs no tu or vous.

The vous question puts the verb before the pronoun. That inversion is the careful way to ask a question in French, and it goes naturally with vous.

Watch out

Comment vous appelez-vous carries a liaison between its second and third words, marked with a tie in the example. Several of its final letters are silent.

In a real conversation

Each exchange is a line and its reply. Greyed letters are written and not pronounced. A tie marks a liaison, with the sound you hear under it. A label under a verb names its tense when it is not the present.

Bonjour, moi c'est Marie. Comment tu t'appelles ?Hello, I'm Marie. What is your name?Je m'appelle Hugo, je suis nouveau ici.My name is Hugo, I'm new here.
Bonjour, moi c'est Marie. Comment vous appelez-vous ?Hello, I'm Marie. What is your name?Je m'appelle Hugo, je suis nouveau ici.My name is Hugo, I'm new here.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between comment tu t'appelles and comment vous appelez-vous?
The person you are talking to: comment tu t'appelles for tu, comment vous appelez-vous for vous.
How do you answer comment tu t'appelles?
With je m'appelle and your name.

More French phrases

Each one with its tu and vous forms, its register and real exchanges.

The whole French phrasebook on one page ›

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Aurélien Cuvelier

Written by

Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck

Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.

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