French people
Les Français

1st row: Joan of Arc • Jacques Cartier • René Descartes • Molière Blaise Pascal • Louis XIV • Voltaire • Diderot • Napoleon 2nd row: Victor Hugo • Alexandre Dumas • Évariste Galois Louis Pasteur • Jules Verne • Gustave Eiffel • Pierre de Coubertin Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec • Marie Curie 3rd row: Marcel Proust • Charles de Gaulle • Josephine Baker Jacques Cousteau • Albert Camus • Édith Piaf François Mitterrand • Brigitte Bardot • Zinedine Zidane
Total population
c. 110 million e
Regions with significant populations
France 64,300,000[1]
United States (French ancestry) 11,500,000a [2]  Canada 10,421,365b  Argentina 6,800,000 [3]  United Kingdom 6,200,000c [4]  Belgium 6,200,000 [5]  Brazil 1,000,000 [6]  Chile 700,000 .[7]  Italy 250,000 [8]  Australia 117,521c [9][10]  Germany 104,085 [11]  Spain 100,408 [12]  Switzerland 95,000 [13]  Israel 85,000 [14]  Mexico 60,000 [15]  Portugal 35,000 [16]  Luxembourg 25,200 [17]  Mauritius 24,000c  Cambodia 16,200b [18]  Lebanon 15,000 [18]  Syria 13,000 [18]  Ecuador 11,000. [18]  Monaco 9,800. [19]
Languages
French
Religion
Traditionally Roman Catholic, see religion in France
Related ethnic groups
Other Latin peoples: Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians Various Germanic peoples (due to Frankish ancestry) : Germans, Dutch, English Various Celtic peoples (due to Gallo-Roman ancestry) : Irish, Bretons, Welsh, Cornish Greek people (related to some French inhabitants of Provence due to Ancient Greek colonization)[20]
Footnotes
a including 2,080,000 of French Canadian ancestry b Including persons of partial French ancestry c Including ancestry and birth d French born people were residing in the during the 2001 Census e Including those with French ancestry

The French (French: Français) are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups. Within France, the French are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence.^[21]

However, the word can also refer to people of French descent who are found in other countries, with significant French-speaking population groups or not, such as Argentina (French Argentines), Brazil (French Brazilians), French West Indies (the French Caribbean people), Canada (French Canadians) and the United States (French Americans), and some of them have a French cultural identity. The United Kingdom also has a large French population, mainly in England, and due to historic relations and immigration.

Citizenship and legal residence[link]

To be French, according to the first article of the Constitution, is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion (sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion).^[21] According to its principles, France has devoted herself to the destiny of a proposition nation, a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live together, as defined by Ernest Renan's "plébiscite de tous les jours" ("daily referendum" on the willingness to live together, in Renan's 1882 essay "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?").

The debate concerning the integration of this view with the principles underlying the European Community remains open.^[22]

A large number of foreigners^[23] have traditionally been permitted to live in France and succeeded in doing so.^[24] Indeed, the country has long valued its openness, tolerance and the quality of services available.^[25] Application for French citizenship is often interpreted as a renouncement of previous state allegiance unless a dual citizenship agreement exists between the two countries (for instance, this is the case with Switzerland: one can be both French and Swiss). The European treaties have formally permitted movement and European citizens enjoy formal rights to employment in the state sector (though not as trainees in reserved branches (e.g. as magistrates).

Seeing itself as an inclusive nation with universal values, France has always valued and strongly advocated assimilation. However, the success of such assimilation has recently been called into question. There is increasing dissatisfaction with, and within, growing ethno-cultural enclaves (communautarisme). The 2005 French riots in some troubled and impoverished suburbs (les quartiers sensibles) were an example of such tensions. However they should not be interpreted as ethnic conflicts (as appeared before in other countries like the USA and the UK) but as social conflicts born out of socioeconomic problems endangering proper integration.^[26]

History[link]

Most French people are the descendants of Gauls (a western European Celtic people), as well as Italic people, Sarmatian peoples (Alans, Taifals), Bretons, Belgae, Aquitanians (Basques), Iberians, Ligurians, Suebi, Saxons and Greeks in southern France,^[27][28] mixed with the Germanic people arriving at the end of the Roman Empire such as the Franks, the Visigoths and the Burgundians, and Vikings known as Normans, who settled mostly in Normandy in the 9th century.^[29][30]

The name "France" etymologically derives from the word Francia, the territory of the Franks. The Franks were a Germanic tribe that overran Roman Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire.

Some regions were immensely affected by mass migrations of different peoples: Celtics in Brittany, and Germanics in Alsatia (Alemanni) before the existence of the Frankish kingdoms, and the languages and culture of these regions continue through self-perpetuation until this day.