Cenomani the latter, the survival of the syllable "man" in "Le Mans" is due to the stress laid on the vowel; had the vowel been short and unaccented, it would have disappeared. In Italy, Cenomani is the name of a people; in Gaul, merely a surname of the Aulerci. William Smith adopts the difference, placing the peoples in two separate articles in his "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography". On the other hand, if the tradition recorded by Cato (in Pliny, "Nat. Hist." iii. 19. s. 23) is true, that the Cenomani formed a settlement near Massilia (modern Marseille), among the
French people French people The French () are an ethnic group and nation who are identified with the country of France. This connection may be ethnic, legal, historical, or cultural. Historically the heritage of the French people is mostly of Celtic and Roman origin, descending from the ancient and medieval populations of Gauls, Ligures, Latins, Iberians, and to a lesser extent, Germanic people such as Franks, Alamans and Norsemen. France has long been a patchwork of local customs and regional differences, and while most French people still speak the French language as their mother tongue, languages like Norman, Occitan, Catalan, Auvergnat, Corsican,