Xavier de Carné de Carnavalet

Lecturer
Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Tutorial: How to use my name

My French name can cause certain troubles due to its length and non-conformance to common beliefs about names, so let me explain how to parse it and quote it when necessary.

Common use cases

In an email:
Dear Dr. de Carnavalet...

In a paper:
Carnavalet et al. showed that...
as shown by Carnavalet et al....

Summary

My name, explained

Pronunciation (IPA)

\ɡza.vje dø kaʁ.ne dø kaʁ.na.va.le\

Explanations

My name is:
Xavier de Carné de Carnavalet
from which the first name is:
Xavier
and the last name is:
de Carné de Carnavalet
that you might also see contracted as:
de Carné-Carnavalet
(yes, my last name starts with a lowercase, read the article from the link in my first sentence if you don't trust me)
which can be divided as a first part:
de Carné
and second/last part:
de Carnavalet
These two tricky "de" are called particles (like van, von, etc.) and there are certain rules that apply when using such name in a sentence.
There are two general rules you should be aware of: Below are the specific rules you may be searching for: