Name of France

Etymology and pronunciation
Main article: Name of France
Originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or “realm of the Franks”.[21] Modern France is still named today Francia in Italian and Spanish, while Frankreich in German, Frankrijk in Dutch and Frankrike in Swedish all mean “Land/realm of the Franks”.

The name of the Franks is related to the English word frank (“free”): the latter stems from the Old French franc (“free, noble, sincere”), ultimately from Medieval Latin francus (“free, exempt from service; freeman, Frank”), a generalization of the tribal name that emerged as a Late Latin borrowing of the reconstructed Frankish endonym *Frank.[22][23] It has been suggested that the meaning “free” was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation,[24] or more generally because they had the status of freemen in contrast to servants or slaves.[23]

The etymology of *Frank is uncertain. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic word *frankōn, which translates as “javelin” or “lance” (the throwing axe of the Franks was known as the francisca),[25] although these weapons may have been named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around.[23]

In English, ‘France’ is pronounced /fræns/ FRANSS in American English and /frɑːns/ FRAHNSS or /fræns/ FRANSS in British English. The pronunciation with /ɑː/ is mostly confined to accents with the trap-bath split such as Received Pronunciation, though it can be also heard in some other dialects such as Cardiff English, in which /frɑːns/ is in free variation with /fræns/.[26][27]