# Why are the French called 'Frogs'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 19, 2000, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878 "2000-11-19T21:31:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Fridgemagnet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/22d042/32.png) [@Fridgemagnet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fridgemagnet)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/61 "2013-05-20T20:01:24Z")
> [@ticker](#): > > The French do not like it when the English make fun of them and have noticed that the English eat roast beef and so sometimes call them ‘le rosbif’ (sp?) but as usual have failed to make it funny. I dunno: even after fetching up 13 years too late I still find that amusing. It’s a dig at the narrow and unimaginative British diet. My favourite French term for the British is “Les Fuck Offs”, which has been picked up from the popular phraseology of my esteemed countryfolk on holiday in France. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/62 "2013-05-20T20:01:47Z")
Um…you’re kidding, right? The answer to your question is painfully obvious: You’re familiar with the **Journal of Biological Chemistry** [article](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22846997), _**“Nuclear-to-cytoplasmic relocalization of the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) during differentiation involves a chromosome region maintenance 1 (CRM1)-dependent export and is a prerequisite for PCNA antiapoptotic activity in mature neutrophils”**_, right? INSERM U1016, 75014 Paris, **France**. And, surely you’re also familiar with the **Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy** [paper](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891061806000706), _ **“Proliferative activity in the frog brain: A PCNA-immunohistochemistry analysis”** _, right? > [@](#): > > \*By means proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) immunohistochemistry, we have provided a detailed neuroanatomical mapping of proliferative activity during development and adulthood in the frog (Rana esculenta) brain. Western blot analysis confirmed the presence of this protein in brain extracts from adults and tadpoles. Proliferative activity was observed in the ventricular and subventricular zones throughout the brain. The present study provides details as to which of the morphologically distinguishable brain region(s) has a long-lasting proliferative activity and in which region this activity undergoes a progressive decrease during development. In the subventricular zones of the third ventricle, PCNA-labeled cells were particularly abundant in the magnocellular preoptic nucleus and the ventromedial thalamic nucleus. It was observed that proliferation zones are present practically in all major subdivisions of the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain, including the cerebellum in which PCNA-labeled cells were located in the outer granular layer and the inner molecular layer. The habenulae, epiphysis and isthmic nuclei never showed the presence of PCNA-immunoreactive nuclei. The widespread proliferative activity implies that the frog brain has a great potential for neurogenesis/gliogenesis not only during larval development but also in the adulthood. \* Must I connect the dots any more than this for you? It might have something to do with them eating frog legs, too. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/63 "2013-05-20T20:05:26Z")
Well, now it makes sense! ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/64 "2013-05-20T20:13:24Z")
Duh ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/65 "2013-05-20T20:22:46Z")
You only call us a cow college because our college was founded by a cow. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/66 "2013-05-20T22:18:35Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I checked out, and there’s indeed a medieval tradition acording to which Clovis used 3 toads (not frogs) as is coat of arms. Apparently the idea was indeed that before his conversion, Clovis used them because they were the symbol of the devil (and Clovis, as a pagan, would have served the devil). According to said tradition, he would have switched to three fleur de lys after his conversion The even more difficult thing about this legend, is nobody is entirely sure what exactly he converted from ( Geary regards Gregory of Tours, writing two generations later that it was from a specifically Roman-style paganism, as a bit unreliable on this ), when exactly he converted or even exactly what he converted to. It’s all very obscure - apparently a couple of historians have even made the argument that he essentially converted from an earlier politically expedient quasi-Arianism ( which would have been shared with his Gothic and Burgundian neighbors ) to an even more expedient quasi-Orthodoxy ( after he broke with the Goths ). So potentially just from one branch of “Christianity” to another - in quotes because he also may never have ceased being a functional polytheist, just trading a Woden or Jupiter for Jesus in the role of head of the pantheon. Early Germanic Christianity of the time was still highly syncretic in nature, much more a folk religion. Though I suppose to the early Orthodox, Arian Christians might have well have been regarded as closet Satanists :D. ---
**Author:** ![YourAdHere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/65b543/32.png) [@YourAdHere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YourAdHere)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/67 "2013-05-20T23:13:07Z")
> [@thereality](#): > > Look i work for a company that produces prospectus for companies floating on the stock exchange. the level of harrasement and detail investors go to get the truth is staggering when they want to be sure they are investing their hard earned money and time in to something they want to be sure… > > how sure are you have you looked and studied ? honestly look it up i think you will very surprised. They hired and trust someone with your spelling, grammar, and “views” with their money? Damn, and here I thought you were a bored, unfortunate product of home schooling. Also, I looked up your quote regarding Napoleon and the Catholic Church. I can’t seem to find it. Can you please point me in the right direction? Academic sources only please, no religious blogs. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/68 "2013-05-21T02:37:18Z")
> [@YourAdHere](#): > > They hired and trust someone with your spelling, grammar, and “views” with their money? Damn, and here I thought you were a bored, unfortunate product of home schooling. [moderating] Personal insults are not allowed in GQ. You’ve been here long enough to know that. This is an official warning. [/moderating] ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/69 "2013-05-21T10:07:55Z")
> [@thereality](#): > > Sorry mate your wrong!!! Your looking in the wrong places > > If you want to see proof and I have friends who live in Paris who have seen the artwork and the history who believe these things as I also do. If you want to know the true Orgin of the frog power look this link up. > > [http://www.biblemagazine.com/magazine/vol-11/v11i2mag.pdf](http://www.biblemagazine.com/magazine/vol-11/v11i2mag.pdf) > > Case closed Or left completely wide open. That article seems to rest on little more than a few random facts picked up by the writer while on holiday and then cobbled together without any sense of chronological context. As others have acknowledged, there was indeed a legend about Clovis and the origins of the fleurs-de-lis. That was hugely popular and widely known in France. Literary and visual examples could be cited for that _ad nauseam_. But only from the late medieval period. No trace of the story is known from before the thirteenth century, over 700 years after Clovis’s death. That is why it reflected such anachronistic assumptions about heraldry. Only pseudohistorians think that Clovis actually used frogs/toads or fleurs-de-lis as symbols. There is however another, rather more serious chronological problem. As Michael Randall has shown in his article, “On the Evolution of Toads in the French Renaissance”, _Renaissance Quarterly_, 57,1 (spring 2004), pp. 126-64, available via [JSTOR](http://www.jstor.org/), the French almost entirely lost interest in this particular Clovis legend from the sixteenth century onwards. It is true that he also shows that some use was made of it in seventeenth-century anti-French polemics in the Spanish Netherlands, but only in some rather arcane antiquarian publications. Yet the English didn’t begin calling the French ‘Frogs’ until the late eighteenth century. (And possibly not even then, as what may be the earliest recorded example is far from clear-cut.) Which creates an obvious difficulty. Why would eighteenth-century English Protestant xenophobes have had even the slightest familiarity with a medieval French Catholic Valois myth? Any connection, if there was one at all, can only have been extremely indirect. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/70 "2013-05-21T11:07:13Z")
> [@APB](#): > > Or left completely wide open. That article seems to rest on little more than a few random facts picked up by the writer while on holiday and then cobbled together without any sense of chronological context. > [. . .] You say “cobbled together,” they say “divinely inspired.” To-may-to / to-mah-to. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/71 "2013-05-21T11:47:57Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I checked out, and there’s indeed a medieval tradition acording to which Clovis used 3 toads (not frogs) as is coat of arms. Apparently the idea was indeed that before his conversion, Clovis used them because they were the symbol of the devil (and Clovis, as a pagan, would have served the devil). According to said tradition, he would have switched to three fleur de lys after his conversion. Of course, if you squint enough, the fleur de lis itself looks a bit like a frog. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/72 "2013-05-21T12:18:21Z")
Likely, confusing the issue still further; but, pursuant to the matter of French heraldic devices featuring frogs and / or toads: according to Bernard Cornwell’s “Sharpe” novels (admittedly not a prime scholarly historical source) – in the Napoleonic Wars, the British troops gave to their French enemies, the nickname of “crapauds” – the French word for “toads”. “Crapauds” has a fine explosively-scornful-sounding resonance to it; plus, in the popular view, the toad is a repellent and un-endearing creature; plus, with present-day hindsight, there is the scatological association, too. Which last, I don’t see as having been there 200 years ago – Thomas Crapper had not yet come along to bless the world with his invention. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/73 "2013-05-21T13:22:07Z")
> [@APB](#): > > There is however another, rather more serious chronological problem. As Michael Randall has shown in his article, “On the Evolution of Toads in the French Renaissance”, _Renaissance Quarterly_, 57,1 (spring 2004), pp. 126-64, available via [JSTOR](http://www.jstor.org/), . I’m amazed we have a specialist of toads depictions in French heraldry on this board…Or at least someone who has read such an article as “On the Evolution of Toads in the French Renaissance” ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878/74 "2013-05-21T14:53:55Z")
> [@Lukeinva](#): > > Frogs are not that common in French restaurants. Yeah, they’re all eating in MacDonald’s these days. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-the-french-called-frogs/41878.md?page=3)