So im having an argument with a frenchman if Charlemagne is French or not. Pic Related is a screen cap of said argument. What's your opinion on this /his/?
Continue?
>>1121202
ethnicity is a spook
This is like arguing if Jesus was Israeli or Palestinian, this shit doesn't make sense
>>1121223
What dosen't make sense is calling him fucking French, and saying French=Franks
>>1121263
He's right, French literally = Franks. French people were referred to as Franks until the late Middle Ages, and the king of France was "king of the Franks". They're literally the same word that just evolved over time. Distinguishing them is an invention by modern historians.
>>1121281
The distinction between Franks and French is reasonable since they were different peoples with different languages.
>>1121281
Sure they inhereted the name. But in the end Germans and Dutch or Belgiums can be just as much considered "franks" as french.
>>1121301
But they weren't. What was referred to as the Franks throughout almost the entire Middle Ages was the people of France, who mostly spoke Old French, followed by Occitan and various other regional languages. What you seem to be referring to is the ancient Germanic tribal confederation called the Franks, but that stopped existing as a confederation when they founded France in the late 400s, and as an ethnicity within the next two or three generations, centuries before Charlemagne. By then the term "Frank" had acquired its new meaning as an ethnonym for the people of France (or Francia if you prefer), and trying to isolate any sort of Frankish ethnicity within them would be impossible.
>>1121303
Only the French were ever referred to as Franks.
>>1121337
Actually nope, western Euros as a whole were called Franks by the Arabs.
>>1121349
I wasn't talking about the Arabs. The Arabs referred to all Westerners as Franks because their contact with them was primarily through Crusaders, who were overwhelmingly French.
>>1121334
>founded France in the late 400s
Wat, if Anything France only came to be after the treaty of Verdun
>>1121337
Yes, but they inhereted the term simply because "eastern Francia" went on to become Holy Roman Empire instead, and middle Francia fucked off to do whatever. Hence they "inhereted" the name.
>>1121359
486 if you want a precise date, when Clovis conquered the last remaining piece of Western Rome, established his capital in Paris, and was baptised in Reims a few years later. There you already have all the regalia of the kingdom of France.
Charlemagne was born in the 8th century. By then the distinction between Franks and Gallo-Romans was long gone.
>>1121371
Well yes, but this wasn't a coincidence, seeing as Eastern Francia was made up primarily of land and people only recently conquered by Charlemagne, who didn't share the previous three centuries of Frankish history.
Charlemagne was a Frank. Neither a German or a French.
He spoke some kind of old German language. He was born in where Belgium is nowadays.
His family came from Austrasia, which would be the German part of the Frankish realm.
The parts of Germany he conquered were Saxony and I believe parts of Bavaria. The rest of Germany already was part of the Frankish realm.
>>1121790
There's nothing "German" about Austrasia, and Saxony and Bavaria make up almost all of Eastern Francia, only the Rhineland and Swabia were already Frankish.
