The street was once known as the Rue des Poulies. In 1415, a noble called le Mazurier offered the Chief Prior of France a huge private mansion with 24 bedrooms to receive 48 poor people. These people were so poor that they did not pay the city's taxes, and were called
francs-bourgeois. In 1868, the street was joined with the Rue Neuve Saint-Catherine and the Rue du Paradis-au-Marais.
Jack Kerouac facetiously translated the name as "street of the outspoken middle class". ==References==