Can Costner Inspire France’s Much-Mocked Kevins to Seek Revenge?
The Rise and Resurgence of France’s Kevins
The era of the Kevin—pronounced “Kev-een” by the French—has taken center stage, ignited by the passion stirred by a mustachioed Kevin Costner in his groundbreaking directorial debut, Dances with Wolves.
Suddenly, young Kevins were popping up across France.
However, the journey wasn’t without its challenges for these youthful ambassadors of Americana.
As Kevin Costner, now 69, prepares for his eagerly awaited return at the Cannes Film Festival, AFP explores how his French namesakes have navigated their path from celebrated to ridiculed and back again.
Je m’appelle Kevin
Originating from the Irish name “Caoimhin,” meaning “gentle,” the Kevin craze in France was fueled by not one, but two massive Hollywood hits.
In 1990, two million French moviegoers flocked to see a young boy named Kevin defend his family home from burglars in Home Alone. The following year, Dances with Wolves, which won seven Oscars, topped the French box office, drawing in a remarkable seven million viewers.
The effect on baby names was immediate—Kevin became the most popular boy’s name in France, chosen for over 14,000 newborns that year, according to AFP data.
The trend persisted, with more than 10,000 baby Kevins born annually until 1995, when numbers began to decline.
Mocked and Shamed
By the time these Kevins reached adolescence in the early 2000s, Costner’s star had dimmed, and the name had taken on a stigma, associated with lower-class families opting for pop-culture-inspired names.
Sociologist Baptiste Coulmont investigated the social implications of French names by comparing them with students’ academic performances. Between 2012 and 2020, only four percent of Kevins received the top “very good” grade on the baccalaureate exam, compared to 18 percent for the more traditional name Augustin.
Director Kevin Fafournoux, who grew up in what he calls an “ordinary” family in central France, is making a documentary titled Save the Kevins. He notes that in his country, the name often evokes negative connotations: “redneck, illiterate, geek, annoying.”
In Germany, which also experienced a Kevin boom in the early 1990s, the negative stereotypes linked to parents choosing exotic-sounding names have a term: Kevinismus. One teacher derisively remarked in a 2009 Die Zeit article that Kevin is “not a name but a diagnosis,” lumping together Kevins, Chantals, and Angelinas as problematic children.
Shedding the Stigma
As time has passed, many Kevins have emerged as doctors, academics, and politicians, challenging previous stereotypes.
“There are tens of thousands of Kevins in France; they are everywhere in society and can no longer be pigeonholed,” Coulmont told The Guardian in a 2022 interview.
That year, two Kevins were elected to parliament with the far-right National Rally (RN).
“Will the Kevins finally have their revenge?” asked Le Point magazine.
The RN’s president is a fresh-faced 28-year-old, who grew up in a high-rise housing estate on the outskirts of Paris and carries a name with distinct American overtones: Jordan Bardella.
