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In French, accents usually tell the reader how double vowels should be pronunced if they are together. For example, the name Raphaël is written with the ''tréma'', to tell the reader that the two vowels are supposed to be said separately. It usually indicates a pose between the two letters. Another example woulb be Adélaïde. If the accent wasn't present, the pronunciation would be quite different. It would be similer to English: A-de-layd. But with the accents, the french pronunciation is A-deh-la-EED.

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Here is another example: Héloïse/Éloïse has a ''tréma'' on the ''i'' because it needs to be pronunced Eh-lo-EEZ. If there was no tréma, it would be said as Eh-lwah-z.

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In fact, thinking about it, French has a lot of names with double vowels (and accents). Anaïs, Aliénor, Éléonore, Léandre, Léon/Léonie, Théodore, Loreleï, Maël/Maëlle, Gaëtan, Léopold/Léonard/Léo, Léa, Chloé, etc.

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I know some people in English just put accents on names to look fancy or think it looks snobbish. But in French, the accents actually have purposes.