Yann Martel: Hello, my name is Yann Martel. It's a French name. I speak French with my parents, it's my mother tongue, and I lived for 10 years in France. But I ended up going to school in English my whole school life, which is why I write in English. Yann is the Breton variation of Ian, of Juan, of John, of Johan. Every European language has a variation of John. Yann is the one from Brittany, which is in western France.

As for Martel, it's a reasonably common very old French name. Most people from Quebec are originally from Normandy in northwestern France.