French diminutive of Lucie, from Latin 'lux' meaning light. Means 'little light.'
Lucette glows with Parisian intimacy — it is the diminutive of Luce, the French form of Lucia, which descends from the Latin lux, meaning light. The name entered European Christian tradition through Saint Lucy of Syracuse, the fourth-century martyr who became the patron of those with eye ailments and is still celebrated on the darkest days of December in Scandinavian lantern processions. The diminutive suffix -ette, so characteristic of French, softens and miniaturizes: Lucette is light made tender, personal, almost whispered.
The name bloomed in mid-twentieth-century France, where it belonged to the generation of women who wore cork-soled shoes during the Occupation and danced to accordion music in the Liberation summer. Its most historically significant bearer may be Lucette Destouches, the dancer and wife of the polarizing novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who remained devoted to him through decades of controversy and literary exile. There is also Lucette, a 1938 French film whose eponymous heroine helped cement the name's romantic currency.
In literature, the name surfaces in the work of Samuel Beckett and carries a faint echo of the music hall. By the late twentieth century Lucette had acquired the beautiful patina of a vintage find — seldom enough to feel rare, familiar enough to feel real. It occupies the same aesthetic neighborhood as Colette, Lisette, and Cosette: names that feel as though they were pressed in lavender. Contemporary parents drawn to French vintage names have quietly rediscovered it, appreciating how it ages gracefully from a little girl's name to something a grown woman wears with full confidence.