Simon

Name Variants

• Simond
• Symon
• Simonde
• Simonin
• Simonneau

Origin & History

Simon is one of the great bridge names of European history — carrying a Hebrew origin through Greek, Latin, and the Catholic Church into every language of Western Christendom.

The name comes from the Hebrew Shim'on, meaning "he who hears" or, more precisely, "God has heard" — the latter a reference to God hearing a mother's prayer for a son. It became Simon in Greek, then Simeon and Simon in Latin, and was spread across Europe by two of the most prominent apostles in the New Testament: Simon Peter (who became Saint Peter, the rock of the Church) and Simon the Zealot.

As a French surname, Simon solidified in the 12th and 13th centuries, typically as a patronymic — the son of Simon, or a man named after the apostle. The name is found across all regions of France, but it concentrates notably in the south and southwest — Gascony, Languedoc, and the Rhône valley — where the Romanized Latin form of the name took strongest hold.

Simon is also found among Huguenot families who fled France after 1685. The name appears in Huguenot refugee records in England, the Dutch Republic, Prussia, and South Africa — where Huguenot settlers established themselves in the Cape wine country, and where Simon's Town (Simonstad) bears the name of a French Huguenot settler.

In Alsace, the German-French border region, Simon blends with its German equivalent Simeon and crosses into both cultural traditions, making Alsatian Simon families complex to trace across national boundaries.

Notable Bearers

Jules Simon

19th-century French statesman and philosopher, Prime Minister under the Third Republic, one of the architects of France's secular educational system.

Paul Simon

American musician — the Simon in his name likely traces to Eastern European Jewish immigration, where Simeon was a common given name, demonstrating the name's breadth across cultures.

The French Diaspora

The Simon name reached North America via several routes. The Huguenots carried it to the Dutch colonies (New York's early New Paltz settlers included Simons), to Virginia, and to South Carolina. The Catholic French carried it to Quebec and Louisiana. German-speaking Alsatians brought both Simon and Simeon variants to Pennsylvania and the Midwest in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In South Africa, Simon's Town on the Cape Peninsula preserves the name of the Huguenot families who settled there under Dutch East India Company rule in the late 17th century. The broader Cape Malay and Cape Creole communities absorbed French Huguenot surnames, and Simon is among those that survived across mixed communities.

Genealogy Research Tips

For French Simon genealogy, the starting point is the departmental archives of the region where your ancestor was born. Parish records (registres paroissiaux) from before the Revolution are available in regional archives, while civil registration (from 1792 onward) is held in the same departmental archives and increasingly online via FranceArchives.fr.

For Huguenot Simon families, the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland holds detailed records of families who passed through London and settled in Britain or continued to the American colonies. The Bibliothèque du Protestantisme Français in Paris is the leading French archive for Protestant genealogy.