France

La France. Since Roman times, France has been a major theater of European history. In Classical times, the region covered by most of the modern Republic of France was Gaul, Gallia, which would become a Roman province. The name, which shares a root with other places dominated by Celts (Galatia in Poland, Galicia in Spain, etc.), but the origin of this name is uncertain. Some have proposed Proto-Celtic *g(h)al- "powerful," or that it is named for a Gallos River that is now unknown. In any case, this was the name of the country until the arrival of the Franks.

Roman Gaul was subdivided into three major parts: Cisalpine Gaul, Gallia Cisalpina, meaning "Gaul on this side of the Alps" was eventually merged into Italy. Narbonese Gaul, Gallia Narbonensis, covered a chunk of southeast France (modern Provence, Côte d'Azur, and Languedoc regions). It was centered on the city of Narbonne (L Narbo). It was also called Transalpine Gaul -- Gallia Transalpina -- ... guess why. The biggest part, which would become modern France, Belgium (Wallonia at least), and parts of Germany and the Netherlands, was called Gallia Comata, "long-haired Gaul," filled with what were to the Romans the equivalent a savage, hairy bikers.

It was this region which Julius Caesar refers to in his famous Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Gallia Belgica was named for the Belgae (see Belgium), Gallia Aquitania in the southeast for the Aquitani (see Aquitaine), and Gallia Lugdunensis in the east for Lugdunum, modern Lyons (see Lyons).

But France, of course, is named for these Franks. The tribe was probably named for a type of spear called *frankon in Proto-Germanic. The Latin name for their land, Francia, referred simply to the territory of these ferocious barbarians. In the 3rd century, Francia was an triangle of land north and east of the Rhine. As the Franks expanded, the name did as well, but for a long time Francia and Gaul were used simultaneously, as the Franks themselves were a minority among the Gallo-Romans (And this is why the Frankish language is dead and modern French descends from the Vulgar Latin of Gaul).

In the 5th century, the Franks began to dominate northern Gaul, and in 486, Clovis I united much of Gaul. In good time he converted to Catholicism (not Arianism, the heretic faith of the Goths), made his capital at Paris, and founded the Merovingian Dynasty. The seed of modern France had been planted. By the time Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West in 800, the Franks were at the peak of their power. The Frankish Empire was divided up permanently after a civil war among his grandsons: Lothair got the central part, including the Low Countries, Alsace, Lorraine ("Lotharingia") Burgundy, and northern Italy; Louis the German received East Francia, which would eveolve into the Holy Roman Empire and modern Germany; and Charles the Bald got West Francia, which would become the core of modern France, including Aquitaine. Interestingly, France is still called Frankreich in German, which literally means "Empire of the Franks" (although the ethnonym is französisch, deriving from the Latin name).


West Francia crumbled in the early Middle Ages, with the various dukedoms struggling for power, making France a vague decentralized region -- a very violent place. Hugh Capet was elected as Rex Francorum ("King of the Franks") in 987. From that point on, the idea of la France was strongly associated with le roi, whose power (and France's) grew and grew until 1789 ... and it's been downhill ever since. We've gone back and forth from republic to monarchy, with an empire thrown in there under Napoleon, and couple of other revolutions and assorted radicalism, like the Paris Commune in 1871. As of today, June 19, 2010 at 7:35 pm (GMT +1), the Fifth Republic reigns, and they even have a smart logo that looks like an American sports league: