A Severe Case of Inattentional Blindness: the Frisian Tribe’s Name

Hans Faber
Aug 14, 2022
16 min read

Updated: Sep 4

The name Frisii for the people who lived along the southern coast of the North Sea is ancient—very ancient. It dates back to Late Antiquity. Today, we call them Frisians. Roman and Greek historians, as well as bureaucrats, recorded the tribe’s name nearly two millennia ago. Because of this, modern Frisians carry one of the oldest documented tribal names in all of Europe. Yet, there is no agreement on what the name actually means. Countless theories still circulate in scholarly debate. We, humble hikers of the Frisia Coast Trail, decided it was time to put this endless discussion to rest. A recent archaeological publication gave us the chance to do so. The answer, as it turns out, has been hiding in plain sight all along—like a hare crouched low on the barren tidal marshes in early spring.

Almost two millennia ago, when Mediterranean civilization reached the remote backwaters along the southern shores of the North Sea, they recorded that the people living in the west and north of what is now the Netherlands were Frisians. Roman and Greek authors—among them Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Cassius Dio, and Ptolemy I Soter—referred to them as Frisii, Phresii, Frisei, Fresones, Frusiones, Frisiones, Phresones, Phresiones, Frixones, Frigones, Fresonici, Friszozi, Fraisoz… and perhaps a few more spellings we may have overlooked. Over the centuries, these names evolved into forms such as Fresan, Frysan, Frýsum, Freeschen, Vriesen, Vresen, frison, frieson, frísir, Frisere, Friesen, Friezen—and eventually Friesians and Frisians. By now, we are not merely talking of humans anymore when using the name with the specific spelling Friesian, but also of the well-known cow and horse breeds.

The first thing we noticed is that most papers and articles on the origin of the Frisian tribe’s name simply assume that the Frisians already bore this name when the Romans arrived. In this scenario, the Romans, burdened with their heavy military gear, trudged into the marshy lowlands and asked the long-haired locals who they were and what they called themselves. In a deep, guttural voice, the reply must have been something like “phrays.” Et voilà—name explained! Unfortunately, those Roman visitors neglected to ask the natives, or at least to record, what the name actually meant.

When reasoning from the assumption that the Frisians had already filed their tribal name at the civil registry before Roman troops set foot in the territory, another issue arises in explaining its origin. Namely: were the Frisians a Germanic people, a Celtic people, or perhaps a mix of both? If they spoke a Celtic language—and the linguistic as well as material-cultural evidence is increasingly leaning that way (Schrijver 2017; see also our blog post Barbarians Riding to the Capital to Claim Rights on Farmland)—then one must construct a different theory than if they spoke a Germanic language (Van Renswoude 2012). Put simply: if the Frisians were Celts and uttered the word phrays, it must have meant something else than if they were Germanic and spat out the same word. This theory gets stuck in the Wadden Sea mud rather quickly.

Hawar, for many centuries after the Romans showed up, nobody really cared what the name of the Frisians meant anyway. Not the Frisians themselves. Not the rest of the world either. That is, until roughly two centuries ago, when history and Romanticism became all the rage and every proud nation-state, along with its people, scrambled to prove they had the deepest and most ancient roots. And if not the very oldest, then at least nobler and older than the neighbours’. The Frisians, of course, joined in this I-am-the-noblest-and-most-ancient game too. With passion, even—and already in the second half of the fifteenth century!

We, humble hikers, went looking for the insights of the wiser minds who have studied this question over the centuries. Yet after almost two millennia, instead of a single clear answer, we found ourselves facing a whole bouquet of theories. So, after dipping into archives, books, and the vast corners of the internet we have gathered the most common explanations for the name Fries/Frisian.

One classic explanation, we file under the category of fashion, links Fries/Frisian to the Old Frisian words frisle and fresle, or the English frizzle, meaning ‘curly hair’. Add to that the Dutch verb friseren—‘to curl hair’, though admittedly a French loanword—and the picture emerges: supposedly, the Frisians sported curly locks some 2,000 years ago (Grimm 1840, Müllenhoff 1900, De Vries 1971, Van Veen & Van der Sijs 1997). In the same context of hair, consider vrieze, Fries, frise, frisa, and friz in English, German, French, Portuguese, and Ukrainian, all referring to a coarse woollen fabric. In Middle Dutch, this cloth was simply called frise.

The most recent argument we have come across is that, since the word frise is almost identical to Fries, this must be the most logical explanation (Bernard Mees on Facebook, 2024). This ‘well-wrought’ theory, however, rests on nothing beyond a mere word resemblance. It feels like the linguistic equivalent of Turkish scholars claiming—to be clear, something they do not—that the North African Berber people were named after barbers, since berber means barber in the Turkish language.

True, we cannot deny that the history of Frisia is one in which sheep and their curly woollen fleece played a major role. We all know of the famous pallia fresonica (‘Frisian cloaks’) mentioned in several early-medieval texts, and of the production of fresum in Frisia, as recorded in the late eighth-century codex Lex Frisionum (‘law of the Frisians’). To claim that Frisians were named after their curly hair, rough wool, or sheep does not make much sense, we think. If there is any relation, it is far more plausible the other way around. We will only reconsider this theory if DNA research confirms that the gene for curly hair was indeed strongly present. In the meantime, the best we can do with this frivolous theory is enjoy the Dutch ’80s teenage girl group Frizzle Sizzle and their song Alles heeft een ritme (‘Everything has a rhythm’), or the songs of the musical Hair.

For more background on wool production, fashion, and sheep in early-medieval Frisia, see our blog posts Haute couture from the salt marshes and Come to rescue The Rolling Sheep.

By the way, fitting in the category of ‘the-words-just-look-alike’ explanations, since the Frisians were also called Frigones in the Ravenna Cosmography (ca. AD 700), their tribe’s name has occasionally been linked to coldness or the chilly climate. Perhaps the founder of this simple theory was Melis Stoke (ca. 1235–1305) from the province of Zeeland, who guessed that the Romans, shivering from the cold (or fear), coined the name (Janse 1993). However, if the southern shores of the North Sea, which actually enjoy rather mild temperatures, were already considered cold by the Romans and Greeks, then tribes living even further north would have deserved the title even more. Perhaps these frigid Mediterranean folks should have worn more vrieze fabric, mentioned earlier. No more words on this cheap theory—it is somewhat comparable to the one-dimensional curly-hair hypothesis.

Besides fashion, heroism and Frisian nationalism have also inspired explanations for the tribe’s name. One theory in this category links it to Old High German freisa (‘danger’) and the Proto-Germanic verb fraistōn meaning ‘to fear’, or the Middle Gothic verb fraisan meaning ‘to attempt’. In this interpretation, the tribe’s name Fries/Frisian could be understood as ‘the brave’ or ‘the daring’ (Zeuß 1837; see Neumann 2008). Compare also the modern Dutch verb vrezen, meaning ‘to fear’.

Another theory, also rooted in heroism and nationalism, interprets Fries/Frisian as ‘free’. Connections are made to the Gothic word freis and Old High German fri meaning ‘free’, as well as freobroþur, ‘your own brotherly’ or ‘popular/loved’. The Old Germanic words frisijoz and frijaz conveyed notions of being ‘free’ or ‘unbound’ and ‘brotherly’ (Krogmann 1964, Ramat 1976; see Neumann 2008, Van Renswoude 2012).

A very fragile element of the two scenarios above is, as mentioned at the start of this blog post, that we do not actually know whether the Frisians spoke a Germanic language. In fact, it is quite possible they did not. If that were the case, they likely spoke a Celtic language. And if not Germanic, the entire ‘brave and free’ theory goes straight into the shredder.

Yet another heroic type of explanation is that Fries/Frisian relates to weapons. The Greek words πριων (prion) and πρισμα (prisma) for a certain type of saw, apparently, might etymologically be related to the word Fries/Frisian. It supposedly refers to the sharp, jagged tip of a harpoon—a harpoon sometimes made of bone. In this scenario, Frisians were named after the fishing gear and weapons they carried (Loewenthal 1929; see Krogmann 1964). Well, if you say so… this theory surely earns a prize for creativity.

A final heroic, Romantic-type explanation is that Fries/Frisian originates from the Germanic goddess Freyja or Freya, or maybe from her twin brother Freyr or Frey. Besides, the -s of Fries/Frisian is misleading; Germanic idols are also much younger than the tribe's name. Only with the Early Middle Ages does Germanic mythology find access to this region. Even more, it is highly doubtful there ever was a notable Germanic mythology cult and devotion to its gods, like Woden and Donar, in the area that is the Netherlands today (Schuyf 2019). So, as free advice, do not get carried away too much with Thor hammer pendants and stuff when imagining or re-enacting early-medieval Frisia or the Low Countries, for that matter.

By the way, goddess Freya was the equivalent of the Roman god Venus and later of the Christian 'deity' Virgin Mary. Beautiful Freya also wore the legendary necklace Brísingamen, of which we have boldly suggested earlier that it has been recovered in former Frisia, more precisely in the province of Friesland. See our blog post Ornament of the Gods found in a mound of clay.

Conservation Area Noarderleech (tidal marshland) near Blija with the Terp fan’e Takomst, by Rijkswaterstaat Noord Nederland

A less grand and captivating explanation is that the tribe’s name Fries/Frisian denotes ‘those who live on the edge of land’. The name Fries/Frisian in this theory is related to the Latin prīmus, or its older form prismo, meaning ‘that which lies in the front’. Additionally, the Indo-Germanic word preis and the related Gothic fēra and Old High German fēra, fiara mean ‘side, fringe, or flank’. In other words, again, people who lived on the edge, who lived on the coast (Ten Doornkaat-Koolman 1879, Grienberger 1913, Hellqvist 1939, Törnquist 1958, see Neumann 2008). Think also of a frieze in classical Roman and Greek architecture. A long stretch construction element, often decorated with reliefs. In itself a charming theory, we think.

One might even think that the typical property boundary stone walls made from field boulders with earth on top known as Friesenmauern ('Frisian walls') are related to the former 'edge' explanation. Nevertheless, these walls seem to have originated in the region of Nordfriesland.

A final category of explanation, is the one of folklore. How the three brothers Friso, Saxo, and Bruno, sons of King Sem, left the valley of the River Ganges around 300 BC in search of new land because of an imminent famine and ended up at the shores of the North Sea. Friso named his kingdom Frisia. Another folktale is that the Frisians are named after King Frisius of Friesland. Frisius was a son of the Frankish King Coglio (Dykstra 1966). What is folklore stays folklore.

One thing becomes immediately clear from the short overview above: nobody really has a clue. Such is the fate of etymology. A thousand explanations for a single word. Every etymologist their own theory. That is, if there haven’t been more than a thousand etymologists poring over it. And this time, we do not even know to which original language family—Germanic, Celtic, or Latin—the label Fries/Frisian belonged.

So what we end up with are free-spirited, flower-power types with curly hair, perhaps with braids, dressed in woollen clothes. Darting across the salt marshes or the long beaches of the North Sea, shaping bones into little harpoons or saws for fishing as their main activity. Probably to catch fish to fry over a campfire in the evening—if it does not rain too much. Yes, the image that forms is almost like a Christopher Atkins movie on a Frisian beach. Surely, there must be more to it.

Well, there is.

We recently published a blog post on the American surname 'Fries'. It turned out that this surname had no connection to the tribe's name Fries/Frisian at all. Instead, Friesen were skilled migrant workers active in the south of Germany in the seventeenth century, who originally came from mountainous Switzerland. These Friesen workers possessed the skills and tools to cultivate swamps and turn wetlands into drier and arable land. They did so by digging ditches and raising dykes. A typical tool these trenchers used was the Friesenbeil, an axe to cut ditches and canals. Read our blog post From Patriot to Insurgent: John Fries and the First Tax Rebellions for more about this piece of history and the surname Fries.

The etymology of the Friesen workers from Switzerland has everything to do with cutting land. Like fresar el paisaje 'cutting the land' in Spanish tongue today. Compare also the French verb fraiser 'to cut' or 'to mill'. In the Mid-Frisian language the verb freze exists. In Dutch the old-fashioned spelling for a router or milling cutter was a frais, and specific, very fine chisels were named fraisbeitels. The Germanic verbs freze (Mid Frisian), frezen (Dutch), fräsning (Swedish), and fräsen (German), and—more importantly—the verbs of the Romance languages fraiser (French), fresar (Spanish) and fresare (Italian) all have developed from the Vulgar Latin verb fresare. It had the meaning of milling, cutting, grooving, crushing, removing shells (Philippa, et al 2003-2009). For the joy of it, we like to add the Greek word for a milling cutter as well: φρέζα. Pronounce it and be surprised!

The link between 'cutting the land', the Swiss Friesen workers, and the name of the Frisians has been made before (Krogmann 1964). According to this theory, Frisians already had adopted their tribe's name as soon as they settled on the salt marshes of what is today the Netherlands. A name expressing 'those who cut land'. From archaeological research in the '50s-'60's namely, it had already become clear that Frisians were real navvies, real earthmovers, and dug plenty of ditches and dykes. To both drain the land from saltwater, and to collect fresh water. Only think of the excavations of the Feddersen terp in the region of Land Wursten between 1955 and 1963. A terp settlement dating from the first century BC to the fifth century AD. The ploughed fields were bordered by natural creeks and dug ditches (Nicolay & Huisman 2022).

We wrote about the culture of digging ditches before in our blog post Groove is in the Hearth. Very superstitious, is the way. Ditches were that much important they were honoured with all kinds of ritual deposits during the Iron Age (Nieuwhof 2015). Also, archaeological research that has being carried out into the embanked land of Lionserpolder in the province of Friesland has already revealed a landscape of so-called 'linear phenomena', e.g ditches and trenches, dating from the Late Iron Age (Feiken & Van der Heiden 2022).

Then there was the news this month (August 2022).

In the province of Friesland, a 2,200-year-old dyke was discovered and researched (Bakker 2022). A unique find (see image below). A dyke of 4 meters wide and 3 kilometers long was found. Its function was to—modestly—limit the frequency of flooding by the sea while also serving as a road for the transport of wagons and cattle, and horses we add. But not only a dyke was discovered; tens of ditches were also identified, dug at right angles to the dyke, in straight lines. Indeed, fresar el paisaje in optima forma. Hence, this digging mania of the Frisians was present when Roman soldiers arrived in the area. Everywhere, ditches on the flat and barren salt marshes, in plain sight. What is still called greppelland, meaning 'trench land', today in the Dutch language, as you can still find, for example, in the surroundings of the village of Jorwerd (Janssen 2024).

dike system with ditches Late Iron Age near Wyns (RuG/provincie Fryslân) — archaeological research dike system with ditches Late Iron Age near Wyns (Bakker 2022)

Somehow the not-so-sexy, dirt(h)y theory of land cutting of Krogmann (1964) never became popular. It also excluded the idea that it was the Romans who could have given the tribe’s name to the Frisians. According to this theory, the Frisians must have had their name as landscapers already, maybe as early as 600 BC. Perhaps this contributed to all the juggling with alternative etymological explanations listed above, which make no heads or tails. Whilst the solution was down to earth and right under everyone’s nose, namely that 2,000 years ago the Romans came, saw, and named: ‘those who cut the land’. It is a bit like how Freriks & Storms (2022) recently described the people of the province of Groningen who reclaimed land from the Wadden Sea in modern times: "De gravende mens, de grenzen trekkende mens, de grondwerkers en landarbeiders, de mens als waterbeheerser en landbezitter (etc.)" ('the burrowing man, the border-drawing man, the navvies and land workers, man as water manager and landowner').

And come to think of it, this is also how the sixth-century Greek historian Procopius of Caesarea described this coastal area in book III of his History of the Wars.

Along the coast of the ocean which lies opposite the island of Brittia there are numerous villages. These are inhabited by men who fish with nets or till the soil or carry on a sea‑trade with this island, being in other respects subject to the Franks, but never making them any payment of tribute, that burden having been remitted to them from ancient times on account, as they say, of a certain service, which will here be described by me.

People lived in many small settlements dotted everywhere, who were involved in sea trade, and who tilled the soil. This supports the idea that the Romans could have named the Frisians after how they worked the land, since it was to them a remarkable and notable activity of these people. To learn why, according to Procopius, these coastal navvies did not have to pay tribute to the Franks, read our blog post Rowing souls of the dead to Britain: the ferryman of Solleveld.

Sure, if we are right about the Romans attributing the name to the Frisian tribe around the date of Christ, the name does not date back to the times the Frisians settled on the tidal marshlands five or six centuries before that. Hence, the tribe's name turns out to be quite a bit younger. Well, you win some, you lose some. Connecting the use of land with group identity is not surprising. Since time immemorial, ditches—but also banks, walls, hedges, rivers, and so on—embody control over resources through agricultural property rights. They constituted boundaries and gave, among other things, expression to social relationships, status, and communal identity. In fact, identity was originally determined by the land the group possessed (Oosthuizen 2019, Arnold 2024).

To make a brief excursion to a neighbouring tribe: the Danes, or Daner in Danish, were likely named after the landscape they inhabited. Their name is probably connected to the Old High German word tanar meaning ‘sand bank’ and the Proto-Germanic word den meaning ‘low ground.’ In other words: the Flatlanders (Shippey 2022). A fitting description of Denmark’s geography. Compare this with the Netherlands, literally the ‘low lands,’ and with the modern nickname of the Dutch, the Lowlanders—immortalized in their annual music festival Lowlands at the village of Biddinghuizen in the province of Flevoland.

That history repeated itself with the Swiss Friesen migrant workers in Germany during the early modern period is hardly a coincidence. Rather, it confirms the idea that the Romans named peoples after what they most strikingly saw them doing. Just as the Swiss Friesen were called ‘those who cut land,’ so too were the original Frisians. The traditional explanation—that the Swiss Friesen were named after the Frisians proper, famed for their skill in building dykes and digging canals—is reasoning in retrospect. In reality, both the Swiss Friesen in Germany and the Frisian people living along the Wadden Sea coast 2,000 years earlier received their names from the same source and for the same activity: cutting marshland into straight lines of ditches to drain water, so livestock could graze and crops could grow. The modern Dutch word would be Frezers literally 'cutters.' Not the most heroic explanation, perhaps—but certainly no less praiseworthy either.

Note 1 — Below is a passage from the Saga of Egil, an Icelandic text written around 1230. It recounts the adventures of a Viking named Egil in the year 956, including a raid on Frisia. It describes how Frisia looked; flat land with ditches everywhere. It was, by the way, a bit of a spontaneous and hence chaotic raid. Initially, the Frisians went on the run, but soon they regrouped and made the 300 Vikings retreat to their three longships and leave for the sea with their tails between their legs. Very Egil, not agile, and it earned him a Darwin Award.

Þar var jafnlendi og sléttur miklar; díki voru skorin víða um landið og stóð í vatn. Höfðu þeir lukt um akra sína og eng, en í sumum stöðum voru settir staurar stórir yfir díkin, þar er fara skyldi; voru brúar og lagðir yfir viðir.

There [Frisia] were great flatlands and plains; the land was cut into many parts surrounded by ditches filled with water. They [Egil cs] had gone about their [Frisians] fields and meadows, but at some places large stakes were placed over the ditches, there where you should go; bridges were covered with planks.

Notice that the Icelandic word dík means 'ditch'. The etymology of both dyke, also written as dike, and ditch is explained as one and the same activity. When you dig a ditch, you create a dyke at the same time. In the Mid Frisian language, a dyke is called a dyk and, besides the meaning of 'dyke', it also means 'road'—you travelled on dykes in the watery environment of Frisia.

Note 2 — During the fourth and fifth centuries, the Late Iron Age population of the Frisians was replaced by a new population originating from the Elbe-Weser triangle and southern Scandinavia. Nevertheless, they adopted the old name 'Frisian'. This is probably because it was the Franks who, in the Early Middle Ages, designated the tribes living along the southern North Sea coast as 'Frisians'. This is similar to what happened to the Germanic tribes who became known as Saxons, living between the rivers Weser and Elbe, east of the Frisians (Van der Tuuk 2024). This labelling by the Franks is not always the most favoured theory among Frisian historians. It creates a definitive cut of the umbilical cord between the Old Frisians of the Late Iron Age and the modern Frisians, reducing the antiquity of the Frisians to the first half of the fifth century, at best. It is what it is.

Note 3 — We still have to look into the etymology of the name Dr. Fraiser Crane.

Note 4 — Featured image: Ineke van Duinen.