Frank

Member of a group of Germanic peoples prominent in Europe in the 3rd to 9th centuries. Believed to have originated in Pomerania on the Baltic Sea, they had settled on the Rhine by the 3rd century, spread into the Roman Empire by the 4th century, and gradually conquered most of Gaul, Italy, and Germany under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties. The kingdom of the western Franks became France; the kingdom of the eastern Franks became Germany.

The Salian (western) Franks conquered Roman Gaul during the 4th-5th centuries. Their ruler, Clovis, united the Salians with the Ripuarian (eastern) Franks, and they were converted to Christianity. The agriculture of the Merovingian dynasty (named after Clovis's grandfather Merovech) was more advanced than that of the Romans, and they introduced the three-field system (see field). The Merovingians conquered most of western and central Europe, and lasted until the 8th century when the Carolingian dynasty was founded under Charlemagne. The kingdom of the western Franks was fused by the 9th century into a single people with the Gallo-Romans, speaking the modified form of Latin that became modern French.