Baïf

Baïf is a French surname. The name is most often associated with Jean-Antoine de Baïf, a 16th-century French poet and diplomat who was a leading member of the Pléiade, a circle of poets seeking to reform and elevate the French language. Baïf is particularly remembered for his advocacy of vers mesurés à l'antique, an experimental approach to French prosody that sought to imitate classical meters by prescribing fixed line lengths and attention to syllable counts. This program reflected the broader Renaissance aim to rediscover and apply classical models to contemporary poetry, and it influenced his contemporaries and later generations of French poets, contributing to debates about language, form, and style.

In addition to his literary work, Baïf pursued public service and cultural exchange, serving in diplomatic and administrative roles. Although the full project of vers mesurés never fully supplanted traditional French versification, Baïf's experiments and writings helped broaden perceptions of what French poetry could do and opened pathways for linguistic refinement in the Renaissance period.

The surname Baïf remains primarily associated with scholarship on the French Renaissance and the Pléiade. As a proper noun, it also appears in biographical and literary contexts referring to the poet and his circle.