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Often, it’s those who proved to be instrumental in the nation’s history, while others are simply honored as an appreciation for their contributions to the arts and world culture.
 
Three American ambassadors to France have streets named after them; the first, Benjamin Franklin, in the 16th arrondissement, near the Eiffel Tower, as well as elsewhere in France, even tiny towns like Masny (population 4,500) near Lille. Thomas Jefferson, like Franklin, renowned for reasons well beyond his ambassadorship, has a square, also in the 16th arrondissement. The “square Thomas Jefferson” is the name, though it is officially known—appropriately enough—as Place des Etats-Unis (United States Place).  The only other ambassador to have a street named after him is Myron Herrick, (serving 1912-1914 and again 1921-1929).
 

Both presidents who led the United States during the world wars were honored with avenues; Woodrow Wilson’s is in the 16th arrondissement, while President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, honored for his role in winning World War II and saving the German-occupied France, has both an 8th arrondissement avenue bisecting the Champs-Elysees and a metro station on it. Five other avenues in cities around Paris are also named for FDR.
 

Likewise, a mere three months his assassination, John F. Kennedy, the president who famously declared, "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris,” had a quay in the 16th arrondissement dedicated to him as well as ten streets around the country from large cities to out-of-the-way hamlets. The 8th arrondissement is also the home to a rue Lincoln and a rue Washington.
 

Unlike the United States, which largely gives only honorary street names to its grand figures in the arts, many of France’s streets are named for writers, musicians and artists, many of them foreign, including several Americans. Rue George Gershwin in the 12th arrondissement was created in 1993 and named for the American composer. It was a new street formed in a revitalized section of this quartier. The same with Place Leonard Bernstein, a few dozen meters away, created two years later.
 

The Montparnasse area is home to Place Josephine Baker, the African-American performer arguably more appreciated in her adopted country (she became a French citizen in 1937) than in the United States. Her dance performances in the 1920s gave her iconic status, and years later she also aided the French resistance leading to a Croix de Guerre her being made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. Half a century later she would have her own square in the city that made her famous.

Though far from the areas where Ernest Hemingway made his home in the 1920s, in the 5th and 6th arrondissements, there is a rue Hemingway in the sparsely populated 15th as well as elsewhere in the Paris region.
 

The inventors Thomas Edison and George Eastman both have streets (Edison in at least six cities) named after them, Edison with half a dozen streets named after him around the country. Eastman’s, inventor of roll film and founder of Kodak, is in the 13th arrondissement.
 

One American street name is not without controversy; in 2006, a new street in the city of Saint-Denis, a working class suburb north of Paris, was inaugurated with the name rue Mumia Abu-Jamal as a sign of solidarity with the African-American and former Black Panther convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 and now on death row.