Southern France

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Southern France (or the South of France), colloquially known as Le Midi, is a loosely defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Gironde, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, and Switzerland south of the Jura. The region includes:

• Aquitaine
• Midi-Pyrénées
• Languedoc-Roussillon
• Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
• Corsica
• Rhone-Alpes
• Auvergne
• Limousin

This area corresponds in large part to Occitania; that to say, the territory in which Occitan (the langue d'oc) – as distinct from the langues d'oïl of northern France – was the historically dominant language.

The name le Midi derives from mi (middle) and di (day) in Old French. Midday was synonymous with the direction of south because in France the Sun is in the south at noon, like all of the Northern Hemisphere. The synonymy existed in Middle French as well, where meridien means both "midday" and "south."

[edit] See also

• France
• Northern Basque Country
• Northern Catalonia
• Occitania
• Vichy France
• Southern Europe
• Mezzogiorno (name for Southern Italy with the same etymology)