Edith Piaf

Édith Piaf was a French singer who became one of the most-iconic French popular-music figures of the 20th century — the "Little Sparrow" of mid-20th-century Paris cabaret. She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion on December 19, 1915, in Belleville, Paris. Her early childhood was unusually difficult — her father Louis-Alphonse Gassion was a circus acrobat, and her mother Annetta Giovanna Maillard (an Italian-French circus singer) abandoned the family when Édith was an infant. She was raised primarily by her paternal grandmother (who ran a Normandy brothel) and traveled with her father's circus performances across northern France.

Her singing career began at age 14 in the Paris streets — singing for tips alongside her father's circus performances. Her 1935 discovery by Louis Leplée, owner of the Paris cabaret Le Gerny's, came when Leplée heard her singing at the Paris streetcorner of Pigalle. He hired her, gave her the stage name "La Môme Piaf" ("The Little Sparrow," piaf being Parisian slang for sparrow), and launched her cabaret-stage career. The April 1936 murder of Leplée — for which Piaf was briefly questioned but ultimately cleared as a suspect — marked the beginning of her independent career.

Her Paris cabaret-and-recording career through the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s produced some of the most-iconic French songs of the 20th century — "La Vie en rose" (1947), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Padam, padam..." (1951), "Milord" (1959), and the 1960 "Non, je ne regrette rien" ("No, I Regret Nothing," the Charles Dumont and Michel Vaucaire composition that has continuously stayed in 20th-century French and international cabaret canon).

Her personal life was marked by extreme tragedy — the 1949 plane-crash death of her great love, the French-Moroccan boxer Marcel Cerdan, and continuous physical decline through morphine addiction (a consequence of injuries sustained in three serious car accidents) and severe arthritis. She died on October 10, 1963, at age 47, at her villa in Plascassier, France, of liver failure. Her funeral procession through Paris drew an estimated 100,000 mourners — the largest civilian funeral procession in 20th-century Paris.

Her name Edith is from the Old English Eadgyth meaning "prosperous in war" or "wealthy gift." Edith has been continuously climbing in American naming since the 2010s vintage-revival wave.