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Comment by doe88 | Hacker News Reader

I think there is a simple explanation, he is not that known in France.

He is pretty famous in France. Most cities have a street with his name, everybody learn about him in school. I think a lot of people don’t consider him that important compared to other french personalities.

That’s funny, i was going to agree with you that he certainly was famous enough to have his street name… then i thought about it and i must say i’m now more persuaded than ever that he is not really famous in france not even by this low threshold, because in my n=1 sample, i’ve never seen a rue lafayette or avenue lafayette of my life!

Rue La Fayette in Paris is quite an important street, next to Gare du Nord, and is a part of Haussmann's renovation

It's even in the Monopoly ;)

There's a boulevard in my city named after him. According to autocomplete, there's at least six another french cities having such a boulevard.

The big store "Galeries Lafayette" is also named after the street in which the first store was opened.

If you mention Lafayette to a French person, he’ll most likely think of the department store, not the person.

Hell, he's not that well known in the US either. I know in my Revolutionary War studies, the French were pretty much a footnote. Not saying all teachings were as poor as mine, but I know the textbooks I used were used in a several other states.

You're joking, right? How many counties and cities in America have "Fayette", if not "Lafayette" in their names? That's our guy here. I was absolutely aware of him via my history classes at least as far back as high school no more than 20 years ago. But perhaps they stopped teaching actual history and relevant characters since then.

Indeed, there are more than twenty American cities and towns named for the man, and scores more of townships, places, squares, parks, and streets. There are five streets named Lafayette in New York City alone. The Wikipedia article of American places named for Lafayette doesn't even mention some others that I happen to know like Lafayette Park in San Francisco.

Yup. Grew up in one of them.

I don't dispute that at all, but I have a feeling if you were to do a "man on the street" type of poll, it would be pretty telling. If you're willing to stipulate that the readers of HN probably have a greater grasp of history than the larger percentage of the population, I'll stipulate that most HN readers probably have an idea of why Lafayette's name is used to name cities/streets/parks.

The average person is pretty ill-informed.

Right, which goes along with my comment about lots of people not having a clue to who Lafayette was.

I get that, I just prefer to not take too much stock in what a "man on the street" doesn't know about... much of anything really.

I just lament that sad state of public education in America generally, and more pertinently how people just think Lafayette was the guy from Hamilton (in some bastardized form, I presume.)

I never saw the musical, nor will I, but the man who is almost single-handedly responsible for getting the French to save our asses deserves a bit more renown in my opinion.

Okay, but you came at me[0] with the "you're joking" line, when you just self-owned admitted that a large population of the US would not know who the man was. I never said that I didn't know, but yet you challenged my statement like it was wrong while now admitting that it's sadly probably accurate.

[0] not saying it was hostile, just challenging something you deep down knew but didn't want to admit

"He's very well known in the US, except by the people who live there" isn't much of a position. If you want to talk about whether he's well known, you're stuck with the fact that nobody knows who he is. Those aren't distinct concepts.

My history classes ~20 years ago definitely made me aware Lafayette existed, but I'd say the extent I learned was that he was a French General in Revolutionary War.

I bet most Americans who have heard of him assume his first name is "Marquis."

Or that his last name is Park or Street, maybe Square

It's probably been about 20 years since I did American Revolutionary history in school and yea his name pops up, but he's treated as a minor character and a footnote. Gotta be honest, I only just learned his first name was Gilbert...

> his first name was Gilbert

Which the French pronounce, zheel BEAR (with the usual guttural R at the end). (Source: lived in France as a kid, had a family friend by that name; cf. Stephen Colbert.)

I feel like there's enough Lafayette cities and counties in the US to counter the notion that he isn't well known.

He's also in Hamilton, one of the most well known musicals ever.

America's favorite fighting Frenchman!

That only shows he was well known, but do the people nowadays know why the cities and counties were named like that?

I would guess so but I clearly give the average American more credit than others in this thread.

He is universally known in France. It's Rochambeau who isn't.

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