French signatures

One thing we used to do for a laugh during my early days at Citibank was to whip out the signature books. There used to be these books filled with authorized signatures from major banks around the world. The biggest laughs were reserved for the signatures from French banks.

The French, it appears to me, do not take signatures very seriously. Nobody I know ever signs their full name. Every French adult, at one point or another in life, has created a simple single-stroke personal "emblem". Here are some examples, actual signatures I happened to have lying around on various documents around the house:





See what I mean?