Variant of Cosette, meaning little thing, popularized by Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.
Cozette is a variant spelling of Cosette, the name made immortal by Victor Hugo's 1862 masterpiece Les Misérables. In the novel, Cosette is the illegitimate daughter of Fantine, rescued from the cruel Thénardiers by Jean Valjean and raised with paternal devotion — her journey from abused waif to refined young woman forming one of the story's central emotional arcs. Hugo derived the name partly from a French slang term cosette (a small thing, a trifle), and partly, it is suggested, as a diminutive of Nicole through the regional form Nicolette.
The name had little independent existence before Hugo gave it its literary identity. The Cosette of Les Misérables became one of the most recognizable fictional characters in Western literature, appearing in countless stage, film, and musical adaptations — most notably the long-running musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, which since its 1980 Paris debut has been seen by over 70 million people worldwide. The 2012 Hollywood film adaptation renewed global acquaintance with the character, played by Amanda Seyfried.
Through these adaptations, Cosette became synonymous with innocent suffering redeemed by love, childhood resilience, and the transformative power of parental protection. The Cozette spelling represents the anglicized or personalized variant adopted by families who want the name's literary romance without the strictly French orthography. It retains the soft, whimsical sound of the original while giving the name a slightly more English-friendly appearance. In English-speaking countries, Cozette has been used as a distinctively literary choice, appealing to parents drawn to names with a strong narrative identity and an undeniably romantic, 19th-century Parisian quality.