Marquise comes from the French title of nobility and means "marquess" or "nobleman", a lord who guarded the border marches; in French the spelling with -e is the title for a woman, but American usage adopted it for boys. It belongs to the aristocratic-sounding names such as Marquis and Dominique that were popular with African American families in the 1990s. Marquise ranked number 590 in 2000, has since left the US top 1000 and stands at number 2324 in 2025.