Who came up with the names of countries and languages?

Answer

Dear Céline, nice question 🙂

First of all, countries and languages ​​are not constant data, if you look at it over a longer period of time. What we now know and use as Dutch has evolved from a form of Low German, for example. French, on the other hand, comes from the folk Latin that was spoken here in the late Roman and early medieval period. Languages ​​evolve. However: as you rightly say: at the moment language borders and state borders are often in harmony with each other. This is due to the modern state as it started to form in the 19th century, but actually only finally fell into its fold after WWI.

Why is this important: Because the moment a certain area is governed as a modern democratic state, all laws and regulations apply throughout that area. The same is true for education. In a modern state, the same education applies within the area of ​​that state’s borders. In France, for example, the same French is taught everywhere, in principle. And since the emergence of a Walloon and Flemish community government, the same Dutch is taught everywhere in Flanders and the same French in Wallonia.

Why is this important, because this way of working creates unity in terms of language, where this was not the case before, or was not necessary. Many other languages ​​were spoken in France: Breton (as a form of old Gaulish) in Brittany, old Flemish in French Flanders, Occitan in the Pyrenees and so on. If you now ensure that you establish a state, with borders and agreements within those borders about education of only one language, and one administration, and television and radio in the same language, etc., then all those other languages ​​will disappear and one language will be per country and border. The same applies to our dialects, which are also slowly disappearing due to the unification of the spoken and used language into the Dutch taught in Flanders. Did you know that there were French-speaking language islands in what we now call Flanders until the Middle Ages?

In short: to stick to the example of France: the fact that there is now a large country France where millions of people speak French does not mean that all people in that area have always spoken French. The largest, dominant group is, and they imposed the language when France started to develop as a state.
In other words, language is a construction and by no means a primal given.

That also applies to those states, by the way, and their borders. All states are politically formed and the borders are the effect of political agreements. But a state must prove itself, or legitimize it.
To this end, they look for an origin in the past, a reason for existence from history.
For example, the name France refers to the Franks. Only, the Franks were just a small elite group that took control. The inhabitants of France are not all historical Franks at all, on the contrary. Only: power had to legitimize itself and you do that by deriving your power from historical situations that appeal to the imagination. But here too, it is all construction, formed, and therefore artificial to a certain extent.

So it also depends on your own place in the world and in time, what you call a country or an area. England, for example, refers to the Angles, a name of an obscure Germanic group? The Welsh, however, call England Loeygir, or “the lost lands,” because England used to be Gaul (Celtic) to them, and England is to them a region from which they were driven.

You see, languages ​​and borders, it is not as simple as it seems, and it is best not to place that unity of language within a border too far back in time.

Conversely, what I always wonder is what we are going to talk about in the future.

Does this help you?

Greetings,

Dries Tys, professor of archeology and history at the Free University of Brussels