naît or né?

[Curt Jugg]

Hi.

I've come across a couple of examples of brief  biographies where the word "naît" has been used where I would expect to see "né" ("born"). Is it usual for the present (rather than the past) tense to be used when stating when someone was born?

Thanks in advance.

[Neil Coffey]

It would be interesting to see an actual example. It could be a typo. However, remember that it's reasonably common in French to use a "historic present"'-- i.e. you use a present tense to describe something that happens in the past. So the word naît, while literally meaning "is born", could effectively mean "was born" under the right circumstances.

[Curt Jugg]

Thanks for your reply. As an example, on the dust cover of  Le Bon Usage  it says, "Maurice Grevisse naît le 7 octobre 1895 à Rulles (Belgique), d'un père forgeron et d'une mère couturière." Further down it says, "André Goosse naît à Liège (Belgique) le 16 avril  1926." Would these be examples of the "historic present"?

[Adam Kim]

There are two perspectives of this.

1. It could be a form of "factual present" equivalent in English. English sentences of indisputable facts have the present tense as a rule of thumb.

2. Adverbs or prepositional phrases showing tenses are doing the trick.

[Curt Jugg]

Thanks for your reply.

[Neil Coffey]

Yes, exactly. So literally it is saying "...is born on 7 October 1895", but in English one would tend to write this in the past tense: "...was born on...".

[Curt Jugg]

Thanks for your reply. I hadn't come across the historic present with naître before.