Old French franc seems to be 'noble, worthy' such as "uns frans chevaler" (a noble knight). I suspect it just has a lot of meanings. Also, the Latin is Francus, isn't it? Mglovesfun (talk) 18:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Etymology
editI wonder if there is a relationship with free, see its PIE root and the meaning. Zezen (talk) Zezen (talk) 15:01, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
- @Zezen I can't see how. Proto-Germanic *frankô refers to a weapon, which is the origin of the tribal name; the meaning "noble; free; frank" is a secondary development within Old French (Medieval Latin francus is only a Latinisation) from when the Franks were the ruling class in Central Europe (see Frank, franc). The name is clearly not derived from a word meaning "free", but from their favourite weapon. Even if you completely ignore the semantics, I don't see how *frankô and *frijaz could conceivably be related even in principle. Whatever the root of *frankô is, it cannot be *preyH-. It just doesn't work out morphologically and phonologically; the only common element is pr-, and that doesn't suffice because it leaves the unexplained difference in the remainder of the word. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:08, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
@Florian Blaschke - thank you very much for your extensive elucidation. Zezen (talk) 15:29, 24 September 2016 (UTC)