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:

Germany

Germany (Deutschland in German), right in the center of Europe both geographically, and at least since medieval times, also politically, has a wide variety of names. Modern Germany did not come into being until 1871 with the formation of the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm I. Before that, the name "Germany" was used in English to refer to the region where "Germans" lived, meaning the people of a certain ethnic, cultural, and linguistic stock who populated central Europe, especially those within the Holy Roman Empire.

GERMANY

Because of Germany's central location and its often chaotic history, it is referred to by several unrelated names in various languages. The English name is derived from the Latin Germania, used as early as the 3rd century BC to refer to lands east of the Rhine. The origin of the name is uncertain, though it seems to be a Gaulish term -- the Germans never referred to themselves as such. Julius Caesar, in his Commentaries on the Gallic War (c. 50-40 BC), and Tacitus, in Germania (98 AD), recognized, though crudely, the differences between the Celtic Gauls and Balgae and the Germans, seeing the latter as more barbaric and dangerous though admiring their industiousness (big surprise), among other virtues. Magna Germania came to refer to the lands east of the Rhine (modern Germany), which were for the most part only ever partially subdued. Roman expanison into Magna Germania ended with the battle of Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD. The two provinces of Germania Superior (roughtly modern-day Switzerland, Baden, and Alsace) and Germania Inferior (Belgium, Luxembourg, Flanders) remained a part of the Empire until the rise of the Franks in the 5th century.


As I said, the exact origin of the name may never be known , though many theories have been advanced. One links the name with the Old Irish [OI] gair, "neighbor," which gives the rather bland explanation that the Belgic Gauls referred to the Germans as simply a neighboring people. Jakob Grimm proposed that the name was related to OI gairm (Proto-Celtic *gar-), "battle cry," referring to their warlike nature, though this could well be a bit of 19th-century romanticism.

DEUTSCHLAND

Deutschland, the name Germans use to refer to their own country, the land of the Deutsch. This word simply means "of the people," and comes from Old High German [OHG] diutisc, from Proto-Germanic *þeudiskaz < *þeudō "people, folk." This is the same source of the name Theodoric (and hence, Dietrich, Dirk, Derek, etc.), Tolkien's character Théoden, and ultimately, of the word "Teutonic," which comes to English via the Latin name for a Germanic tribe, the Teutoni. The Proto-Indo-European root, *teuta, is the source of Irish tuath "country" and maybe even Latin totus, "whole." The word "Dutch," which refers more to people from the Netherlands, comes into English from a Low German dialect -- although the "Pennsylvania Dutch" in the US are actually of German stock, reflecting a time when the distinction was not so clear.


After the breakup of Charlemagne's Empire, Germanic-speaking Franks in Western Francia (modern France) started to refer to their language no longer as frengisk ("Frankish"), but as diutisc "folkish" in order to distinguish themselves from Romance-speaking Franks. This trend spread to Eastern Francia (roughly modern Germany) by the 10th century.

Most ther Germanic languages use a variation of this name: Scandinavian Tyskland, Dutch Duitsland, etc. East Asian languages also use this name, with Japanese Doitsu and Chinese Déguó, a pun which literally translates to "moral country."

ALLEMAGNE

In most Romance languages (French Allemagne, Spanish Alemania, Portuguese Alemanha), in several languages of the Near East (Arabic 'Almāniyā, Persian 'Ālmān, Turkish Almanya), and in various Celtic languages (Welsh Yr Almaen, Breton Alamagn), a name is used which derives from the name of the Alamanni, a Germanic tribe who had settled in the Upper Rhine Valley. Today, "Alemannic" refers to the dialect of German spoken in the Black Forest around Freiburg im Breisgau. Even the English name for German was more commonly "Almain" until the 16th century. This name was probably spread to other nations by the French.

The origin of the name Alemanni itself is disputed. It almost certainly comes from PG *Alamanniz, which can be derived two ways: It could mean "all men," referring to a confederation of tribes, or the al- part is related to Latin alius "other" and English "else," and it means "foreign men, aliens."

SAKSA

In Finnic languages (Finnish Saksa, Estonia Saksamaa), the name comes from the Saxons, who were prominent in the East along the Elbe (modern Saxony is in the former East Germany). The warlike Saxons, whom the Franks only subdued and converted after a long series of bloody conflicts, were named for the seax, the single-edged knife or sword they wielded.

NIEMCY

In most Slavic languages, the name for the Germany may be derived from a Slavic root meaning "mute" or "dumb": Polish Niemcy, Czech Německo, Ukrainian Nimeččyna, and (non-Slavic) Hungarian Némeország. According to this theory, the Slavs, who derived their own name from slovo, "word," referred to foreigners, and then specifically Germanic tribes, as nemoy, "mute, dumb, or those who cannot talk." A better but less colorful theory has this name coming from the Nemetes, a tribe mentioned by Caesar and Tacitus living in the area around modern Speyer in southwest Germany on the Rhine. Their name is probably derived from a Celtic word nemeton, "sacred space, sacred grove." The Arabic name for Austria, an-Nimsā, may also come from this name.

OTHER

In Latvian and Lithuanian, the words for Germany are Vācija and Vokietija, most likely from German Volk, "people, folk." Old Norse used the term Suðvegr, "south way," as opposed to Norðvegr, the "north way," Norway. And in Tahitian, Purutia is a variation of Prusse, the French name for Prussia.