List of people with Huguenot ancestry


Some notable French Huguenots or people with French Huguenot ancestry include:

Architects

Artists

Chefs and restaurateurs

Doctors and medical practitioners

Educationalists

Entertainers, performers, composers and film-makers

Entrepreneurs and businesspeople

Farmers

Geographers

Historians

Jewellers, clockmakers and craftsmen

Journalists

  • Reginald Bosanquet, English newsreader.
  • Abel Boyer, journalist.
  • Tom Brokaw, American television journalist, author.
  • Frank Deford, American sports journalist.
  • Charles De Boos, Australian journalist.
  • Michael de la Roche, journalist and translator, advocate of religious toleration, member of the Rainbow Coffee House Group.
  • Max du Preez, South African journalist and author.
  • Raymond Durgnat, English film critic, opponent of structuralism and its associated far-left politics, advocate of frequently-derided film-maker Michael Powell, opponent of left wing intellectuals, supporter of working-class culture, descended from French Huguenot refugees who fled to Switzerland.
  • Sean Else, South African writer, filmmaker
  • Orla Guerin, Irish war correspondent.
  • Gideon Joubert, South African science journalist and Intelligent Design proponent.
  • Rian Malan, South African journalist and memoirist, descended from Jacques Malan of Provence and South African Prime Minister, Daniel Malan. Key work: My Traitor's Heart.
  • Matthieu Maty, journalist, founded Journal Brittanique which helped to familiarize French readers with English literature, member of the Royal Society, under-librarian of the British Museum, from Dauphiné.
  • Pierre Motteux, journalist, founder of Gentleman's Journal, from Rouen.
  • Max Raison, publisher and managing editor of Picture Post, and co-founder of New Scientist.
  • Théophraste Renaudot, considered the first French journalist, founder of the Gazette de France.
  • Giles Romilly, British journalist, Nazi POW, nephew of Winston Churchill.
  • John Merry Sage, British journalist
  • Louise Weiss, French journalist and politician, international affairs expert and pacifist. She was the daughter of an Alsatian Protestant mining engineer and philanthropist, Paul Louis Weiss, and a Jewish mother.
  • Peregrine Worsthorne, British journalist.

Lawyers

Librarians

Linguists, lexicographers and semioticians

  • Roland Barthes, literary theorist and semiotician, Marxist atheist from a Protestant family.
  • Ferdinand de Saussure, linguist and semiotician, whose mother was from a wealthy Protestant banking family, and whose father's family consisted of a long line of Huguenot academics who had fled to Geneva to escape persecution. file:Ferdinand de Saussure by Jullien Restored.png|thumb|80px|Ferdinand de Saussure
  • Michael Maittaire, linguist.
  • Paul Passy, linguist, Social Christianity advocate, lived according to 'primitive Christian' ideals, son of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Frédéric Passy.
  • Peter Mark Roget, lexicographer, creator of Roget's Thesaurus, physician.
  • Wilhelm von Humboldt, German linguist. file:Sir Thomas Lawrence - Charles William, Baron von Humboldt - RCIN 404936 - Royal Collection.jpg|thumb|80px|Wilhelm von Humboldt

Martyrs and victims of persecution

Military

Missionaries

  • Élie Allégret, French pastor and missionary in Africa and pacifist.
  • Thomas Barclay, Scottish missionary.
  • François Coillard, missionary in Africa for the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society.
  • François Daumas, missionary in Orange Free State, member of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society.
  • Maurice Leenhardt, missionary, pastor and ethnologist specialising in the Kanak people of New Caledonia.
  • Robert Whitaker McAll, Scottish founder of the Popular Evangelical Mission of France, for the Parisian working class and which is still currently in existence.
  • Pierre Stouppe, Huguenot pastor then low church/evangelical Anglican minister, missionary to African-American slaves.

Pastors and theologians

Philanthropists and charity workers

  • Madeleine Barot, laywoman, saviour of Jews in World War Two, co-writer of the Pomeyrol Theses, evangelist, ecumenist, vice-president of Christian Action for the Abolition of Torture, general secretary of La Cimade.
  • John Bost, pastor, musician and philanthropist, founder of La Famille asylum at La Force in Dordogne for children, orphans, the disabled and incurables. It was followed by a number of other asylums, run today by the John Bost Foundation.
  • Antoinette Butte, French Girl Scouts co-founder. file:Antoinette Butte jeune.jpg|thumb|80px|Antoinette Butte
  • Suzanne Curchod, hospital founder, writer and salonist, wife of Jacques Necker.
  • Guillaume de Clermont, pastor and director of the John Bost Foundation.
  • Jacques de Gastigny, master of the royal buckhounds, philanthropist whose bequest was used to found the London French Hospital.
  • Pierre de La Primaudaye, a governor of the London French Hospital.
  • Malcolm Delevingne, Barnado's charity worker, occupational health and safety and anti-drug advocate, public servant. file:Sir Malcolm Delevingne.jpg|thumb|80px|Malcolm Delevingne
  • Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger, philanthropist and non-violent resistor to German rule in Alsace. file:Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger.jpg|thumb|80px|Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger
  • Jenny d'Héricourt, French social activist and midwife.
  • Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, Nobel Peace Prize winner.
  • Jane Franklin, wife of Sir John Franklin, First Lady of Tasmania, philanthropist, patron of the arts, descended from the Griffin and Guillemard silkweaving families. file:LadyJaneFranklin.png|thumb|80px|Jane Franklin
  • Daniel Legrand, philanthropist and industrialist, grandfather of Tommy Fallot. file:DanielLegrand.jpg|thumb|80px|Daniel Legrand
  • Philippe Ménard, founder of the London French Hospital.
  • Sarah Monod, philanthropist and feminist, daughter of Adolphe Monod.
  • Felix Neff, pastor and philanthropist.
  • Eugénie Niboyet, French social worker, journalist, founder of continental Europe's first avowedly pacifist newspaper, La Paix de Deux Mondes, granddaughter of pastor Pierre Mouchon and the physicist Georges-Louis Le Sage, philanthropist, feminist, imperialist and writer. Key work: De la nécessité d'abolir la peine de mort.
  • J. F. Oberlin, pastor, philanthropist and social reformer.
  • Robert Lewis Roumieu, British architect, governor of the Foundling Hospital, London; honorary architect and director of the French Hospital, co-founder of the Huguenot Society of which he was treasurer and later president.
  • Magda Trocmé, laywoman, wife of André Trocmé, saviour of Jews in World War Two, anti-nuclear activist.
  • Randolph Vigne, South African, President of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain, editor of its publications, director and treasurer of the French Hospital of London, Huguenot researcher and contributor to various publications on Huguenot history.

Philosophers

  • Charles Andler, philosopher, pacifist.
  • Pierre Bayle, French philosopher.
  • Jean Cavaillés, philosopher, pacifist.
  • Jacques Maritain, philosopher from Protestant family, converted to Roman Catholicism, drafter of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
  • James Martineau, English philosopher, educator, Unitarian minister, descended from Gaston Martineau, a Huguenot surgeon and refugee.
  • Paul Ricœur, philosopher and pacifist.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss writer, philosopher, social and educational theorist, descended from Huguenot wine merchant, Didier Rousseau, Jean-Jacques converted to an unorthodox form of Calvinism himself, rejecting original sin and some other key tenets of mainstream Calvinist faith.
  • Théodore Eugène César Ruyssen, philosopher and pacifist, president of Peace Through Law.

Pioneers and explorers

Politicians

Printers and booksellers

Privateers

Royalty

Scientists and engineers

file:denis Papin.jpg|thumb|80px|Denis Papin

Sportspeople

Translators

Weavers and textile manufacturers

Writers

Charles J. Fourie

Other