Talk:French people

The Lead

Batman06400 (talk · contribs) (logged out) added a load of citation requests to the lead as per this diff. I have reverted these per WP:LEADCITE - the lead is a summary of the main and the information is found in the main so lead citations are not required. However, per WP:BRD this talk section should now consider the following questions:

1. Are any of the lead claims not covered by information in the main? If so, they can be deleted from the lead;
2. Is the lead a due summary of the main, correctly representing the information there? If not then some rewriting is in order;
3. Is the lead too long? It is 5 paragraphs, which is technically too many but the paragraphs are not very long; and
4. Can we get the other citations out of the lead for the same reason please? -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:58, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Sirfurboy🏄 Ok, I will redo the intro, because in this article everything is wrong.--Batman06400 (talk) 10:47, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

To avoid needless reverts, can we discuss which claims you believe are wrong? I read the lead this morning and then I read through the main text and it appeared to me that the claims in the intro were fairly summarising the main. If you think information is actually wrong, you should focus on the main text first because the lead must be a summary of the main text. Thanks. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:01, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sirfurboy and Batman06400: I agree that discussion should occur before there are any changes regarding the above questions. There's no point in cluttering up the article history with edits that are likely to be challenged and reverted. WP:BRD applies. Sundayclose (talk) 16:06, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello Sirfurboy🏄 i will put this : The French population comes from the Franks from which it takes its name. They are a Germanic people settled on the shores of the North Sea, in present-day Germany. It was in the 5th century that these peoples crossed the Rhine to come and settle in Gaul. They will come to populate this territory which will then take the name of France, for the country of the Franks. France thus shares its history with Germany, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, all Franks. The French territory is then populated from north to south by these Germanic tribes. Only Brittany will remain Celtic, managing to contain the progression of the Franks.

The Franks, master of the territory, will adopt Latin as the administrative language in order to establish Roman law, of which they will take an example. It should be remembered that the Germanic tribes did not know writing in these times. We must therefore not confuse peoples and cultures. There is a difference between the genetic group which represents the ethnicity of a population, and the language which is here only a cultural heritage. In France, Latin will evolve to give the French language. Today, it is a language considered to be Romance, even if it differs by more than 44% from Latin. Which makes French the most distant Romance language from Latin.

In the 15th century, France annexed Brittany and its Celtic population. In the 17th century, France turned to southern Europe, and in particular to Spain. It annexed Roussillon and its Spanish population. In the 18th century, France turned to Italy and invaded Corsica. In the 19th century, it continued its momentum with the annexation of Savoy and the count of Nice. Of our day, the toponyms of family names in these regions are still almost all of Italian-sounding. Today, with its colonial past and post-war immigration, France is on the way to becoming a melting pot country.

France does not recognize ethnic minorities and their regional languages, like the Catalan, the Corsican, the Niçois or the overseas departments. It unites all the population living on the territory by the French language. The DNA genetic study of the population shows that the French have a genotype identical to the German, Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg populations. The French population is part of the Western European DNA branch with the exception of the former regions of southern Europe (Roussillon, Corsica, Nice) or people of immigrant origin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Batman06400 (talk • contribs) 17:24, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I can deepen or add references if you wish--Batman06400 (talk) 17:37, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

References

I am sorry to say I have reverted your edit. I appreciate you are making a good faith attempt to improve this article, and I regret having to revert it, but there are several reasons why I have done so. Sorry.

(1) You have substantially lengthened the lead. The lead was already too long, so we need to avoid doing that;

(2) As I have said twice before, the lead MUST summarise what is in the main article. You cannot put things in the lead that are not in the main article. Any editor can and will revert information placed in a lead that is not a summary of information found in the main. Edit the main article first, not the lead. The lead is the opening paragraphs. The main is everything after the first heading.

(3) It is simply not true that the French are a Germanic people. Germanic people are linguistically defined. They are speakers of Germanic languages. There is no practical sense in which the French people can be said to be Germanic.

(4) You were asked to discuss your changes here before making them. Posting what you are about to do and then doing it is not discussion.

Now I see that you have again reverted me in the time it took me to write the above. That is unfortunate as this is clear edit warring. I ask you to self revert your change and discuss this issue. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:51, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Sirfurboy🏄 sorry i didn't want to mark on your personal page. You can't erase sourced texts and leave a whole bunch of junk on a wikipedia page. You say you don't want to reference your articles and delete yourself from the referenced articles. You cannot leave idiocy on the French people page without any reference to please only a small group of people. - you cannot refuse to reference the articles and prevent important modifications which are moreover referenced. - the problem is that the lead is totally wrong. you don't want to add text but the old one was totally wrong. - the whole article is false. So, since everything is false, should we leave it like this? the problem is you have to ask people to reference the content or you have to delete it. - The French are Romans, Italians, but what are you basing yourself on ? How long has Aquitaine been an ethnic group ? - wikipedia must be a serious tool. the goal is to inform people - scientifically, a people is an ethnic group. I never said that French was a Germanic language. there is an ethnicity and a language. Senegalese speak French but are not French. in genetics, we are talking about ethnic people. Language belongs to culture. I think you want to leave the article completely subjective as it is. --Batman06400 (talk) 18:25, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

None of sources added by Batman06400 are reliable sources, except for the Alpes-Maritimes website, which however is used to "prove" the WP:OR-statement "the toponyms of family names in these regions are still almost all of Italian-sounding". What is even worse, three sources are identical, viz. the self-published Exploration des possibilités d’émergence d’une langue maternelle unique et globale. Citing the same "book" from three different URLS is misleading (AGF)—or deceptive (NAGF). The rest are promotional websites.

Apart from the lack of reliable sources, the addition to the lead is badly written (poor grammar, unencyclopedic phrases like "it should be remembered" etc.). Last but not least the content. Franks certainly contributed to the ethnogenesis of the French people, but it is WP:FRINGE from every perspective to say that the French people are "Germanic". Not even geneticist make such claim. Further, I urge Batman06400 not to belittle the collective effort of WP editors who worked on this page as "idiocy". Such a language is WP:UNCIVIL. –Austronesier (talk) 18:54, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Austronesier Alas for you but this is the reality. for mistakes you can correct them instead of erasing them. and if you pretend that the french are not germanqieu on what are you based? I know the field very well and I would be curious to see your argument or your sources. the problem is that repeating nonsense on the internet does not improve reality. language does not affect the genetics of a people. we must stop repeating that the French would be Italian because they have a Romance language. --Batman06400 (talk) 19:11, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Are french people mostly ethnic celts or are they germanic or something else?

Why is there not a ancestry DNA test study on french people to find out if they are celtic or germanic or some other ethnicity? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.45.48.134 (talk) 14:14, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@50.45.48.134: Any genetic testing would be impertinent to the article since the ethnogenesis of the French as an ethnic group is not genetic, but rather cultural and as per French authorities national. ProKro (talk) 22:03, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Western European

I tend not to edit boldly this remotely from Bulgaria and the surrounding region but I have noticed the opening line saying that the French are a "Western European" ethnic group. Whilst it is definitely the case that France is located on Western Europe, I am certain that "Western European" or even "European" for that matter are not ethnic classifications, but merely a geographical macrocosm. There can be no denying that the French are a Romance ethnic group even if the people have historically assimilated mass swathes of non-Romance people. As it stands, the French are the only people to be classed as a "Western European ethnic group", and there is no article to support this classification as a concept for serious consideration. I believe changes should be made but I'd prefer to await replies. --Edin balgarin (talk) 10:01, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Western European ethnic group

Some of the content of the article (supposedly sourced) doesn't make any sense. How can you describe French people as a "Western European ethnic group that shares a common ancestry" and then populate the Infobox with numbers of the French (regardless of their ethnic background)? What about those from other ethnic backgrounds, aren't they considered as French people? M.Bitton (talk) 00:28, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Agree. Common ancestry is not a defining characteristic of French identity, except in some peripheral situations like Cajuns in Louisiana that don't matter for the purposes of this page. This should be removed.--Calthinus (talk) 18:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

This is about two years old but I agree for separate reasons, using the total population figure includes those in France which do not identify themselves as French in any capacity (regardless in an ethnic dimension). Perhaps it would be best to remove the France figure and give a note for the reason why it is not included. Tweedle (talk) 08:42, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Pictures of French people in sidebar

When did it become standard to include a map as the article image rather than pictures of the ethnic group it is describing? It would make more sense for there to be pictures of notable French people in the box. Flameoguy (talk) 23:00, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

What picture of French people would adequately describe them, though? Most articles like these stay clear of attempting to represent a people group with a single picture. See, for instance, Italian people Dutch people, English people, Scottish people, Welsh people. Although where the ethnic group is small, a picture is sometimes used. See, for instance, Chuvash people. Even then it is not usual so as to avoid stereotypes. For instance Cornish people does not use one. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:33, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

See also MOS:PEOPLEGALLERY. –Austronesier (talk) 07:48, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Genetics

Since French people see themselves as a political nation, not as a genetically defined group (as explained in the article), it makes little sense to add claims about the genetic prehistory of France. Also, a study is a primary source, while our articles should be based predominantly on secondary sources. Finally, why should we use sources here that talk mostly about Europeans in general with only a marginal mentioning of French people ? Rsk6400 (talk) 18:01, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I want to second User:Rsk6400's points specifically for the revert of this addition[1], because it highlights exceptionally poor editing that is unexceptionally common in articles/sections about genetics:

1. The paper (undoubtedly a good one by a team of well-known experts in their respective fields) is about the population of the Tian Shan mountains during the Iron Age! There are dozens of primary and also secondary sources that directly cover the genetic history of Europe, so why on earth chose this one?
2. The admixture diagram in Fig. 2 of the source has a block of several French individuals ("French" not being further specified, but I know that geneticists usually prefer samples from individuals that have little mobility in their family history for a couple of generations, so most probably the sample does not include mid/late 20th immigrants and their descendants). Each of them have different proportions of the red, green and yellow components. The graph that was added has "variability expressed by overlapping colors". This synopsis is however not in the source, but entirely OR.
3. This is a more technical one, but still symptomatic: the yellow-component is labelled "Eastern Hunter-Gatherer", but Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer indivduals are just as yellow as Eastern Hunter-Gatherer indivduals (and Western Hunter-Gatherer individuals are predominatly yellow too); obviously, the ADMIXTURE analysis at K=15 does not even distinguish between the major Mesolithic European hunter-gatherer groups, so a better generic label would be "European hunter-gatherer". But this shows again that the source is a very poor choice in this context, as it fails to capture the essentials of ancient European population history.

I use harsh words, but that's because this poor content had been reinstated twice. Edit-warring is bad even if you know what you're doing, but it's even worse when it's about fluff. –Austronesier (talk) 18:56, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately the problems here are not unusual in these kinds of articles, in that the article can't make up its mind what definition of "French" applies, or even if any definition can be definitive. Thus we get edits that attempt to narrow the definition of who are "French people", that could be seen as gate-keeping and application of opinion.

In this case, I think that the genetics section should take great care to make it clear that it is only about a sub-set of modern day French people. In which case, there are strong arguments for its removal unless it can include something about the genetics of all French people. (Something I suspect would be largely uninformative and pointless.)

More specifically, use of research primary sources that are about Europe generally, and not specifically France, is highly questionable. Do the sources say that their conclusions apply to what is now modern-day France? If not, the assumption that they do is a leap being made by Wikipedia editors (no matter how small a leap), and these sources should not be used here. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 10:06, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Conscription

"Hobsbawm highlighted the role of conscription, invented by Napoleon, and of the 1880s public instruction laws, which allowed mixing of the various groups of France into a nationalist mold which created the French citizen and his consciousness of membership to a common nation, while the various regional languages of France were progressively eradicated."

This quote from the article is factually inaccurate. Napoleon did not invent conscription himself in any way shape or form. There is room for debate over who the actual "inventor" is, if we must use this language for an idea which seemed to be in the minds of many during the early days of the French Revolution and which is a logical outgrowth of the ideology of said revolution. However, the decree which declared the Levée en masse was authored by Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot and passed on 23 August 1793, which is long before Napoleon had anything to do with the government of France. While this is an insignificant part of the wider article, I find this to be highly misleading and request it be edited by whomever has the power to do so. Procopius00 (talk) 19:21, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The source was also missing. I just removed the whole paragraph, maybe someone could restore it in a correct form and with source. Rsk6400 (talk) 09:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)