A lack of time or imagination? Perhaps both. To choose their new group name in the Assemblée Nationale, the right-wing Les Républicains party ("The Republicans," LR) kept things simple: Droite Républicaine ("Republican Right"). "We didn't have to scratch our heads for too long, and we had to go for it," said the party's number two, Annie Genevard. But she conceded that the name was chosen "fairly quickly," in two days, after the second round of legislative elections on July 7. Within the Assemblée, a new group president will also accompany the new name: Laurent Wauquiez, a former leader of the party and expected presidential candidate in 2027, was elected to succeed Olivier Marleix.

In the other chamber of Parliament, LR senators are also expected to change their name, although nothing has yet been officially decided. "That would seem to me to be quite coherent," said Genevard, who is also a vice president of the Assemblée Nationale. These changes seem to be leading inexorably toward a new moniker for LR. It's an outcome that senior LR members are no longer trying to hide. "We're not heading toward the next election with a party called Les Républicains," said LR lawmaker Fabien Di Filippo, because "this name is only associated with disappointment, betrayal and failure."

LR is no stranger to title changes. Since the post-war period, it has existed under six different names, evolving over the years. And with each new crisis. During the Algerian War, the Union Pour la Nouvelle République ("Union for the New Republic") was created to support the actions of Charles de Gaulle, who had returned to power to get France out of the conflict. It became the Union des Démocrates Pour la République ("Union of Democrats for the Republic") in 1967.

To return to power after the election of centrist Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1974, the Gaullist party became Rassemblement Pour la République ("Rally for the Republic," RPR) in 1976, under the impetus of the young Jacques Chirac. In 2002, the RPR became the Union Pour la Majorité Présidentielle ("Union for the Presidential Majority," UMP) after Jean-Marie Le Pen and the far right surprisingly reached the second round of the presidential election. The UMP became Les Républicains in 2015 to sweep away Nicolas Sarkozy's scandals, notably the Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign and the Bygmalion affair, as well as his defeat at the hands of François Hollande in 2012.

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