French form of Patricia, from Latin 'patricius' meaning noble or patrician.
Patrice flows from the Latin "patricius," a word denoting a member of the patrician class — the aristocratic elite of ancient Rome. The same root gives English "patrician," "patron," and "Patrick," and traces back ultimately to "pater" (father), the patriarchs being, literally, the fathers of the Roman state. Saint Patrick, the fifth-century missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland, carries the masculine form of the name into hagiographic immortality, but the French form Patrice has historically been used for both men and women, which gives it an elegant gender fluidity uncommon among names of this age.
Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, gave the name some of its most charged twentieth-century resonance. His brief, turbulent tenure and assassination in 1961 made him a martyr figure across the African diaspora, and his name was carried forward in tribute by families throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and Black communities in America. The name has also been borne by Patrice Évra, the French football star, and Patrice Rushen, the American jazz and R&B musician whose 1982 hit "Forget Me Nots" remains a classic.
In contemporary usage, Patrice leans feminine in English-speaking countries while remaining gender-neutral in France. It carries a quality of quiet dignity — rooted in classical antiquity but worn without pretension, equally at home in a Francophone household and an American one.