Why do the English call the French “frogs”?

There’s probably no definitive explanation. It’s been said that French can sound to some like the hoarse or hawking noises of frogs, and in the 18th and 19th centuries the “rosbif”-eating English despised people who ate the legs of amphibians.

However, your 17th-century Englander called the Dutch “frogs” or “froglanders” because the Netherlands were wet, marshy and apparently full of frogs, while the French called Parisians “grenouilles” – frogs – as Paris, too, was low-lying and muddy.

In the 1800s Brits mixed their xenophobic taxonomy, also disparaging their Gallic neighbours as “crapauds” (the French for “toads”) or “Johnny Crapaud”.

In fact, the tradition of calling the French “frogs” could go all the way back to the Frankish king Clovis I (died 511), who supposedly used three toads (or frogs) as an emblem but changed it to three fleurs de lys.

On a banner or a shield, the fleur might have looked a bit like a frog seen from above. Or a toad.

A frog on a French postcard, c1890s. The origins of the English calling the French “frogs” may lie in the early medieval era