“« Our ancestors do not sleep in the past: they still live within us. »”
Jean-Louis Beaucarnot
Jean-Louis Beaucarnot
Dubbed by the media as "the pope of genealogy," Jean-Louis Beaucarnot is the great French voice who popularized this discipline. The author of around thirty books, he revealed how our names, our families, and our stories form the living memory of France.
Driven by an early vocation, immersed since the age of 11 in the archives of the village of Morvan where his grandfather was mayor, he published his first book at 25, immediately praised by the national press. Since then, he embodies a genealogy that is both scholarly, accessible, and popular.
A familiar figure on airwaves and screens (France Inter, RTL, Europe 1, France Télévisions, LCP…), he has shared his passion with tens of thousands of French people, urging them to seek their identity and origins, to follow in the footsteps of their ancestors. A sought-after speaker, he engages with companies, associations, and cultural institutions, adding to this passion his historian's rigor, his storytelling talent, and his trainer's skills.
He is the author of around thirty books, including several bestsellers, such as The Family Names and Their Secrets, How Our Ancestors Lived? with the latest published work being the Dictionary of Love for Genealogy (Plon, 2025). For him, genealogy is not just a science of the past: it is a key to better situate oneself and to better understand oneself.
His belief: knowing where one comes from helps to better live the present—and to build the future.
How did our ancestors live?
- Who were they? What were their lives and their setting? To answer these questions, Jean-Louis Beaucarnot takes his audience on an astonishing journey through the centuries, to meet a forgotten world.
- We discover the real face of our ancestors – mostly peasants, but above all believers –, their society, with its norms and rhythms and time flowing at the slow pace of horses.
- From cradle to grave, as from Candlemas to Christmas, we rediscover the foundations of our culture, from the history of soup or the cupboard, to the mention of the fate of foundlings or marriage proposals. Guaranteed change of scenery!
The secrets of our last names!
- Having emerged at the end of the Middle Ages, our surnames are nearly a thousand years old. But they have a meaning that can still be rediscovered.
- A recognized specialist on these subjects, Jean-Louis Beaucarnot explains how our surnames were born and what they mean, while answering many other questions: how many are there? why are some rare and others common? how can one know how many people have yours and whether it is at risk of becoming extinct?
- Is being named Cocu, Chirac, Martin, Wrzinkcz, or La Rochefoucault an asset or a handicap? What is the future of surnames? A captivating and "pertinent" subject!
Meeting with your ancestors: genealogy as a personal adventure
- What is genealogy and why do it? We all have hundreds and thousands of ancestors and even more cousins.
- Genealogy, which allows us to find them, offers us a new and original hobby that leads to conducting a remarkable investigation. Better yet: it opens the doors to adventure. It makes us discover unsuspected relationships, such as the one revealed between François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy or between Léon XIV and Catherine Deneuve.
- For all this, it leads us to explore various archive documents, such as the curious inventories after death, which will describe the house and the furnishings of our ancestors. A very contagious passion…
How did our ancestors live? – Giving flesh to the past
The secrets of our surnames – A story of heritage
professions, places, characters. Jean-Louis Beaucarnot reveals how our names
tell a thousand years of history.