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Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

The Local France
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Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

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If you're listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you're likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a 'Le' 'La' or 'Les' in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn't matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille - I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille - I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille - I come from Marseille 

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But a select few settlements in France do carry a 'Le', a 'La' or a 'Les' as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a 'le', 'la' or 'les' in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe's twitter profile describes him as the 'Maire du Havre', using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with 'Le' in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet - I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet - I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet - I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet - I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet - the Le Touquet Treaty

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Feminine

Some towns carry 'La' as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French 'à la' or 'de la' is allowed, while 'à le' becomes au and 'de le' becomes du. So for 'feminine' towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle - I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle - I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have 'Les' in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as 'The Lilacs' and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg's song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with 'Les' as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas - I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas - I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas - He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion - I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse - I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse - I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion - I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives - I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don't require any a preposition at all. This doesn't change when dealing with 'Le' places, such as Le Mans - which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don't need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans - I am visiting Le Mans

J'aime Le Mans - I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

 

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Anonymous 2022/01/05 10:10
I think, but am happy to be corrected, that le/la/les are deemed ‘determiners’ or ‘articles’ in speech? But interesting article, thank you.
Anonymous 2021/12/06 17:42
Pam, I agree with your concerns but I was able to ignore the missteps and just enjoy learning about the way to handle towns and places whose names begin with an article. For me it was both interesting and helpful!
Anonymous 2021/12/01 15:56
I am so confused! Who cares?!
Anonymous 2021/12/01 13:33
I'm sorry, really sorry, to feel obliged to comment on this piece, given that you do provide some very helpful articles, but ... to quote just a short extract or two: "In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it." The preposition? You mean "à" or "de" in this case. It doesn't disappear, it takes on its form of "au/aux" "du/des" where necessary, is what I think you mean. Then it gets worse, not just muddled but actually inaccurate: "Le is the most common preposition for two names ... with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet etc". Ouch. Where to start? "Two names"? You give a list of several so you mean "two part names" presumably. Then, apart from your invention of "La Mans", it's Le, you use completely the wrong terms because "le" is not a preposition, it's a definite article, so you make it even more muddled and inaccurate because you'd only just been talking about prepositions (but not said what you meant to be comprehensible). I won't go through the whole piece, I hate smart Alecs (I hate that inherent sexism too!), but it's trying to explain something using the wrong terminology & missing basics from the overall picture. I read this article thinking it might turn up something interesting. It didn't in linguistic terms. I suppose it's a bit like trying to explain a joke but forgetting a key point in the joke so it's not funny. Just shows how ancient grammar books had a useful purpose, the same as an exploded diagram of a car engine would be to a mechanic. Thanks anyway for your other articles. Arggh! No pun intended, that just came out!

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