Frankish names

Frankish was the West Germanic language of the Franks, the Germanic people who moved into Roman Gaul and eventually ruled it. Their name is the one the country still carries, since France means the land of the Franks. As the Franks settled and their speech gave way to the Latin-based tongue of the region, Frankish words and names passed into Old French rather than disappearing. Many of the names that later filled the royal houses of France and neighboring lands came out of this Germanic stock. In that sense Frankish belongs to the wider family of Germanic names, and its personal names are best read alongside that broader group, with the added twist that they reached modern use after a long passage through French.

Louis descends from the Frankish name reconstructed as Hludwig, also written in Latin sources as Chlodovech. It was the name of Clovis, the first Frankish king to bring the separate Frankish peoples under a single ruler, a process he completed around the year 500. The name is built from two elements, hlud and wig. Hlud is usually glossed as fame or, more literally, loud, and it is the same root that gives the English word loud. Wig means war or battle. Together they are read as something like famous in battle, though the exact force of the first element is debated. The same name produced German Ludwig, and in France the form Louis was carried by eighteen kings.

Louis reached English mainly through the French royal line rather than through direct Germanic inheritance. Across centuries in which England and France were bound by conquest, marriage, and rivalry, the name of so many French kings became familiar on the English side of the Channel. It settled into English use long ago and has stayed in steady use since, kept current by its royal history and by the related English form Lewis.