This article presents a genealogical reflexion about femicide in France from an historical and political perspective. While the conceptualization of femicide from a feminist perspective is recent (see Jill Radford & Diana E.H. Russell, Femicide : the politics of woman killings, 1992), nineteenth-century newspaper archives show that there have already been attempts to name the problem. However, it was perceived essentially through the prism of marriage – the murder of the wife rather than the murder of a woman – and without taking into account the importance of gender in the very existence of the problem, often referred to as a family drama or a crime of passion. This article aims to show that, on the one hand, femicide is difficult to name and to identify in gender terms, and, on the other hand, the lack of testimony caused by the victim’s death makes it difficult to grasp women’s experiences, which probably accounts for its late theorization.