# Name of the Franks

The name of the historical peoples called Franks is believed to be derived from the Germanic language spoken by the earliest Franks themselves, although this is uncertain.
What it meant to be a Frank gradually changed over the centuries, not only in the sense that it referred to an ever-broader part of the European population, but also in the sense that during at least some periods the term identified people based partly upon political and legal factors, and was not an ethnic term in any simple sense.
Derived terms include the regional terms Francia and Franconia, and the adjectives Frankish and Franconian. Francia, meaning the land of the Franks, originally referred to the homeland of the Frankish tribes living near the lower Rhine river, but it evolved to become the name of present day France. Franconia is a region in present day central Germany, which like France, was once ruled by a nobility which was perceived to be Frankish.
It first appears as a collective term in the 3rd century AD, referring to a regional grouping of Germanic peoples who were already long known to Roman authors by their own various tribal names.
Much later, the Frankish Empire rose to become the main successor of Roman imperial power in Western Europe, and the use of Frank-related terms changed in many ways. Later, the name of the Franks became the source of the names of both the Kingdom of France, and the Duchy of Franconia, and everything with a name derived from either of these two political entities.

## Name origins

The name of the Franks is first attested in Latin as Franci (singular Francus) during the 3rd century AD. The Franks themselves spoke West Germanic dialects related to modern German and Dutch, but there are very few surviving examples of this language. The much later Germanic forms Franchon (Old High German), Francan (Old English) and Frankar ~ Frakkar (Old Norse) point to an original n-stem *Frank-an- or *Frank-on- in the Frankish language.
According to one traditional interpretation, the Franks were named from their national weapon, a kind of spear called the *frankōn (cf. OE franca 'javelin, lance', ON frakka 'javelin, dart'), in a process analogous to the naming of the Saxons, which derives from Proto-Germanic *sahsōn, a small sword similar to a knife or a dagger (cf. OE seax, ON sax, OHG sahs). However, these terms are first found in Romance languages and probably derive from the name of the Franks itself, as the name of a Frankish weapon. This may however have derived from a Germanic word reflected in Latin framea, which was the word Romans used to describe the javelin used by Germani. (Similarly the term francisca, a throwing axe used by the Franks, is an ellipsis of securis Francisca, which means 'Frankish axe' in Latin.)
Another traditional interpretation of the name is that Frank means "fierce". Many modern scholars consider this likely, proposing a Proto-Germanic adjective *frankaz, meaning "fierce, daring, eager to fight", which could itself be understood as a nasalized secondary form of the better attested reconstruction *frekaz, which meant "greedy", but sometimes evolved towards meanings such as "bold". It has descendants such as German frech (cheeky, shameless), Middle Dutch vrec (miserly), Old English frǣc (greedy, bold), and Old Norse frekr (brazen, greedy).
By the end of the 6th century AD, the tribal name francus turned into an adjective meaning 'free' in Medieval Latin, presumably because the Franks were exempt from taxation within the territories they had conquered in northern Gaul, or more generally because they possessed there full freedom in contrast to native Gallo-Romance speakers. The English word frank ('free of servitude'; later 'candid, outspoken, unreserved') stems from the Old French franc ('free of servitude'; later also 'noble'), which is itself derived from Medieval Latin francus. By the 17th century AD in the Levant, the term Frank came to designate any contemporary individual from Western Europe, or, by ellipsis, the lingua franca, a Romance-based pidgin language used in the Mediterranean Bassin.
In a tradition going back to the 7th-century Chronicle of Fredegar, the name of the Franks comes from a legendary founder figure named Francio, who first led the Franks to settle on the Rhine and started to build a city named Troy there, after ancient Troy where his own ancestors supposedly came from. The city he had in mind is likely to be the real Roman city now known as Xanten, but then known as Colonia Traiana, which was really named after Trajan, but was known as Troja minor (lesser Troy) in the Middle Ages. Isidore of Seville (died 636) said that there were two proposals known to him about the origin of the Frankish name. Either the Franks took their name from a war leader called Francus, or else their name referred to their wild manners (feritas morum).

## Frankish empire

Under the reign of the Franks' Kings Clovis I, Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne, the country was known as Kingdom of Franks or Francia. At the Treaty of Verdun in 843, the Frankish Empire was divided in three parts : West Francia (Francia Occidentalis), Middle Francia and East Francia (Francia Orientalis).
The rulers of Francia Orientalis, who soon claimed the imperial title and wanted to reunify the Frankish Empire, dropped the name Francia Orientalis and called their realm the Holy Roman Empire (see History of Germany). The kings of Francia Occidentalis successfully opposed this claim and managed to preserve Francia Occidentalis as an independent kingdom, distinct from the Holy Roman Empire. The Battle of Bouvines in 1214 definitively marked the end of the efforts by the Holy Roman Empire to reunify the old Frankish Empire by conquering France.
Since the name Francia Orientalis had disappeared, there arose the habit to refer to Francia Occidentalis as Francia only, from which the word France is derived. The French state has been in continuous existence since 843 (except for a brief interruption in 885–887), with an unbroken line of heads of states since the first king of Francia Occidentalis (Charles the Bald) to the current president of the French Republic (Emmanuel Macron). Noticeably, in German, France is still called Frankreich, which literally means "Reich (realm) of the Franks". In order to distinguish it from the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne, France is called Frankreich, while the Frankish Empire is called Frankenreich.
Writing in 2009, Professor Christopher Wickham pointed out that "the word 'Frankish' quickly ceased to have an exclusive ethnic connotation. North of the Loire everyone seems to have been considered a Frank by the mid-seventh century at the latest; Romani were essentially the inhabitants of Aquitaine after that". On the other hand, the formulary of Marculf written about AD 700 described a continuation of national identities within a mixed population when it stated that "all the peoples who dwell [in the official's province], Franks, Romans, Burgundians, and those of other nations, live ... according to their law and their custom."

## France

The country name France stems from the Latin Francia (the land of the Franks). Its adjective French (Modern French Français; from Old French franceis) is now used to designate the French people and language. Between the reigns of John II of France (1360) and Henri IV (1589–1610), then from the French Convention of 1795 to the adoption of the euro (1999), the franc also served as the currency of France. The term, which may be derived from Francorum Rex ('king of the Franks'), the original motto engraved on coins by the French monarchy, survives today in the name of the Swiss franc, the CFA franc (Western Africa), and the CFP franc (French Pacific).
In most of the modern Germanic languages, France is known as the historical "Land of the Franks", for example Frankreich (Reich of the Franks) in German, Frankrijk (Rijk of the Franks) in Dutch, Frankrike (Rike of the Franks) in Swedish and Norwegian, and Frankrig in Danish.
In a more restricted meaning, "France" refers specifically to the province of Île-de-France (with Paris at its centre), which historically was the heart of the royal demesne. This meaning is found in some geographic names, such as French Brie (Brie française) and French Vexin (Vexin français). French Brie, the area where the Brie cheese is produced, is the part of Brie that was annexed to the royal demesne, as opposed to Champagne Brie (Brie champenoise) which was annexed by Champagne. Likewise, French Vexin is the part of Vexin inside the région Île-de-France, as opposed to Norman Vexin (Vexin normand) which is in the neighbouring part of the région Normandie.
This meaning is also found in the name of the French language (langue française), whose literal meaning is "language of Île-de-France". It is not until the 19th and 20th centuries that the language of Île-de-France indeed became the language of the whole country France. In modern French, the French language is called [le] français, while the old language of Île-de-France is called by the name applied to it according to a 19th-century theory on the origin of the French language - [le] francien., but now Central French (français central).

## Franconia in Germany

Franconia became the Latin name of East Francia, derived from the German name Franken "realm of the Franks".
Franconia was introduced as a synonym of Francia orientalis by the 12th century (Annalista Saxo). It came to be used of the Duchy of Franconia as it stood during the 9th and 10th centuries, divided Franconia during the later medieval period, and the Franconian Circle of the early modern period.