HISTORY OF FRANCE. CHAPTER I. THE MERWINGS AND KARLINGS. I. Meaning of the name France. — The modern king- dom of France, in Latin F7-ancia, is one of the states which arose out of the break-up of the great Frankish power at the end of the ninth century. It is one of two parts of the Frankish dominion which have to our own day kept the Frankish name. For Francia means the land of the Franks, wherever that land may be, and it has therefore meant different lands at different times. It gradually came to mean a certain part of Germany and a certain part of Gaul. The German Francia is the land which is still called Franken or Franconia. This German Francia, which was once of much greater extent than it is now, was distinguished as the Juislern or Teutonic Francia. The Gaulish Francia, which was distinguished in the same way as Western or Latin Francia, lay in the northern part of Gaul, but its name has been gradually spread over the greater part of Gaul. The princes of the Western Francia, whose capital was at Paris, became kings of the western kingdom of the Franks ; and, as their power spread, partly by annexing the dominions of their vassals, partly by annexing lands altogether beyond their own kingdom, the name of their duchy of France spread itself wherever their poAver reached. Thus the greater part of Gaul came to be called France, and Paris came to be the head of so mush of Gaul as formed the dominion of the French kings. Caul then is a geographical name, meaning a certain part of the earth's surface. France 's a. political n?imQ,mea.n g such parts of Gaul as have formed the dominions of the French
