“My name is Gérald, Moussa, Jean Darmanin”

During the handover to his successor Bruno Retailleau, the now former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, spoke of his origins, especially his Arabic-sounding first name Moussa, coming from his grandfather, “an Algerian rifleman who served France”. Enough to spark a lively controversy.

“My name is Gérald, Moussa, Jean Darmanin. (…) It is quite obvious, if we are honest, that if I had been called Moussa Darmanin, I would not have been elected mayor and deputy and I probably would not have been Minister of the Interior,” he stressed during this official ceremony. His first name Moussa is symbolic of the resistance of his grandfather Moussa Ouakid, an Algerian rifleman alongside the French. But his first name Gérald was preferred to Moussa, a Maghrebi or Arabic-sounding first name. “My name is Gérald Moussa Jean Darmanin. My father, at the maternity hospital in Valenciennes, wanted to write ‘Moussa Darmanin’, after my grandfather, an Algerian rifleman who had served France,” the former top cop in France further stressed.