[Jean-François Mignot]

A scientific article published in April 2019 in the journal Population and societies indicates that in metropolitan France in 2008, the most frequent first names among the grandsons of immigrants from the Maghreb were “Yanis” and “Nicolas”.

In total, according to the study, only 23% grandchildren of immigrants from the Maghreb would have an "Arab-Muslim" first name, an order of magnitude quite close to the 16% of grandchildren of immigrants from Southern Europe who would have a "Latin" first name. Considering the first names of the descendants of immigrants as "a cultural marker" and "a measure of assimilation", the authors note that "The first names that the grandchildren [of immigrants from the Maghreb] receive are, in 2008, close to those that the majority population gives to its children", and that "The trajectory followed by those from the Maghreb leads to the same point of arrival as that followed by Southern Europeans, but in a delayed manner." Problem: these results, published by the newsletter of the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) and widely publicized, are inaccurate. After checking, in metropolitan France in 2008 the most frequent first names among the grandsons of immigrants from the Maghreb were not "Yanis" and "Nicolas", but "Karim" and "Nassim".

And according to the INED nomenclature of first names, it is not 23% but 49% of the grandchildren of immigrants from the Maghreb who have an “Arab-Muslim” first name, compared to 8% of the grandchildren of immigrants from Southern Europe who have a “Latin” first name. Since the article is inaccurate, it must — in accordance with the practices of the scientific community — be duly retracted. These errors are troubling because for 20 months, from April 2019 to December 2020, the authors and the INED refused to communicate their methodology and they prevented the verification of their results.

Read the full study on the Open Research Archives website: