The word for 'France' in different languages

Need a break from studying French? In this blog, you'll learn Navajo, Chinese, Hebrew and Maori. Specifically, you'll learn the word each of these languages uses for France.

The name a country is given in a particular language tells you a lot about the historical relationship between both countries. Sometimes, the name used relates to a specific aspect of the country, such as a tribe that used to live there. Other times, it's simply a phonetic approximation of the country's name in its own language.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that the name most languages use to refer to France is a variant of, well, 'France'. Look at the list below, for example:

French: France

English: France

Spanish: Francia

Portuguese: França

German: Frankreich

Dutch: Frankrijk

Russian: Франция (Frantsiya)

Arabic: فرنسا (Faransā)

Even the word for France in languages like Georgian, which on the surface sound very different, share the same root. (საფრანგეთი - 'Saprangeti' - means land of the Franks. In Georgian, country names are formed by adding the circumfix სა-...-ეთი (sa-...-eti) to the name of the country. ფრანგი - 'Prangi' - means 'Franks'.)

France is named after the Franks, which was the name given to the people who lived there in the medieval period. We don't exactly know where the name 'Franks' came from. It could mean 'the free ones', 'the bold ones' or even 'the spear people'.

Either way, the Franks were a Germanic people who took over much of what is modern-day France and consolidated their power there under Clovis I. Thereafter, people referred to the country as 'the land of the Franks' - or 'France', for short.

Greek

The Greek word for France is Γαλλία ('Gallia'), which refers to the Gauls. This is how France - or at least the part of Europe which later became the nation of France - was known to the Romans, too, but in Italian the name changed to Francia. In Greek, however, it stayed the same.

Chinese

In Chinese, France was traditionally referred to as 法兰西 (falanxi), a phonetic transcription of 'France', or more commonly nowadays as 法国 (faguo), meaning 'Fa' (the first part of Falanxi) 'country'. Of course, those characters already have a meaning in Chinese, so the Chinese word for France, taken literally, means something like 'law orchid west'.

Maori

In Maori, the word for France is Wīwī (a transliteration of 'oui oui', 'yes yes'.)

Hebrew

The Hebrew word for France is צרפת ('Tzarfat'), which actually refers to a town in modern Lebanon. During the Middle Ages, Jewish communities in Europe used Biblical place names to refer to their respective countries. Spain became 'Sepharad' (ספרד), Germany became 'Ashkenaz' (אשכנז) and France became 'Tzarfat' (צרפת).

Navajo

The Navajo word for 'France' is Dáághahii Dineʼé bikéyah - 'the land of the people with moustaches'.